Choice and Consequence
by prodigywriter
Summary: Sam and Dean head to Dover, DE on a hunt that has more ties to their, and John's, pasts than they realize. Is it a cat and mouse chase with a demon bent on adding to their tally of pain and loss or something much more sinister?
1. Chapter 1

This story takes place during Season 5 sometime between Episodes 11 and 12. There are a few spoilers so if you haven't, for one reason or another, seen the show/season up to that point, you may want to skip this and come back later...

With that said, I _am_ a writer so when I write, I write novel length (most of the time) so this story will be lenghty. I try to keep my chapters to about 10-11 pages (in Microsoft Word) and that hasn't been too daunting when I transfer over to this site. My stories wind up being about 20 - 22 chapters, but, please, don't be frightened! If you want to send me a comment in regards to that, please do! Let me know if I should combine chapters or something...I'm always up for comments about it all!

As always, reviews of any and all kinds are greatly appreciated.

_Of course - **Disclaimer**: I do not own anything associated with Supernatural (which is a bummer, really...) except for the creations of any OCs within this story and anything else that may have been developed in the Laboratory of my Mad-Scientist-Brain. Thanks!_

**And - with that - READ ON!**

**

* * *

**

**One**

Lightning flashed bright, leaving a hazy white ghost along the horizon. The sound of thunder rumbled overhead, rolling across the sky in an angry wave of sound. The rain, which had started as lazy droplets, now poured steadily from the heavens, coating everything in an icy veil. The wind, whipped into frenzy by the immense storm, blew through the trees, ripping off branches and launching them through the air like arrows shot from a bow.

Amanda Reese shuddered, the black wool jacket and denim pants she wore making her feel like she was wrapped in a layer of ice. She was crouched in the bushes, hidden in the shadow of the Colmar County Library, her eyes squinted against the water that flowed over her face.

"C'mon," Amanda growled as another bolt of lightning lit up the sky, leaving a trail across her vision. She shifted her position, trying to ease the numbness that was creeping up her legs and seizing the muscles in her calves and thighs.

There was a crash from inside the library and Amanda tensed, her eyes focused on the dark doorway to the old building, her hands clenched into fists. There was a second crash which was almost completely concealed by another clap of thunder. It was followed immediately by the sound of shattering glass.

Amanda cursed under her breath and began to rise, her left hand dipping inside her jacket for a moment. When she withdrew her hand, her slim, long fingers were clenched around the handle of a shot gun, its twin barrels cut down well below legal length.

"Screw this."

Amanda darted from the shadows, running along the edge of the building, her body hunched against the pounding rain and fierce wind as she moved towards the doorway. Just as she was approaching the entrance, a figure burst through the glass doors, slamming them open so hard that they shattered against the brick façade.

Amanda reached out, grabbing the tail of the brown suede coat as the figure tried to bolt down the stone steps, and yanked it to a sudden stop. The figure rounded on her, swinging with a right hook. Amanda instinctively threw her hand up, catching the figure's fist by the wrist.

"Dammit, Jones! It's me, Mandy."

"Sorry," a timid voice stuttered out.

A sudden flash of lightning illuminated the street and the two people standing just inside the library doorway. Amanda focused her bright blue eyes on the smear of crimson slashed across Jones' left cheek and threw her hands into the air, the shotgun forgotten for the time being, as she waved it around her head in frustration.

"It was supposed to be an easy salt and burn. All you had to do was go in, find the freakin' reliquary, and douse the damn bones inside it."

The young boy in front of her wilted, his sandy blonde hair flopping into his soft blue eyes as he reached up and gently rubbed at the skin around the still bleeding gash. "I know. I screwed up," he grumbled halfheartedly. Jones stared down at his feet, digging at the sidewalk with the tip of his sneaker.

Amanda paced back and forth, her breath coming out in tiny puffs of white steam, her hands hanging at her sides, the shotgun bumping against her soaked leg. Suddenly, she stopped and spun to face the street, bringing the gun up. Jones' head whipped up to follow Amanda's eye line.

"Relax, kids. It's just me," a deep voice echoed across the empty parking lot. A man approached his silver hair a beacon as he moved towards Amanda and Jones. "I thought I told you two to leave this job alone?" There was no anger in his tone, no irritation, just mild amusement.

"Yeah, we know," Jones muttered out. "Mandy thought you were being too overprotective," he managed to get out before Amanda's hand whipped out, hitting him in the diaphragm, forcing the air from his lungs.

The man chuckled lightly and stepped onto the stoop. "I figured as much." His dark brown eyes took in their disheveled appearances and the man chuckled again.

"C'mon, Dag. Jones and me have been around this stuff our whole lives," Amanda groaned.

"Yeah, well. How about living a little bit more of those lives before you jump into hunting full time?" Dag reached out and laid his hand on Amanda's shoulder, giving it a gentle squeeze before removing it again. He glanced at Jones, finally noticing the cut on his cheek. "I'm guessing things aren't going as smoothly as you had hoped."

Amanda grunted and shook her head. "Only because I let Jones talk me into letting him take point." She shoved the shotgun back inside her jacket and pulled it tight around her. "Should have known he couldn't handle…" she began to mumble under her breath.

"Hey!" Jones cried out, hurt heavy in his voice. "It's not like you could have climbed in through that back window." His lips curved up in a small, satisfied smile as he saw his words dig into Amanda's bravado. Her pale cheeks flushed pink and she took a menacing step towards him, her hands balled into fists.

"No, you're right about that," Amanda snapped, her tone turning cold. "Only a scrawny little…"

"Enough," Dag barked, cutting her off. Both flinched at the command and backed down. "You two came here to do a job so now you're going to work _together_ to finish it." Dag narrowed his eyes, the lines around them deepening. Amanda rolled her eyes and Jones, his eyes once again cast down at his feet, slowly nodded his head.

"What do you know about the job?" Dag prompted, his face softening as he watched the two kids before him. There was a long beat of silence.

Finally, Amanda gave an exasperated sigh and slumped against the wall of the library's entrance. Dag focused on her as she began to talk. "In 1854, Enid Harman opened Colmar's first non-profit orphanage. For the next three years, she ran the orphanage as if it were a Vietnamese sweat shop.

"When the children would complain, they were severely punished. She went as far as chaining them in place in the basement, in the dark, and leaving them there without food or water for days."

"Then, in 1872, the orphanage caught fire," Jones cut in, his voice pitching with excitement at the sordid turn he knew the story was about to take. "By the time the fire was put out, Enid and five kids were dead." Jones could feel Amanda's angry eyes on him as he talked. He smiled in triumphant when Dag's eyes traveled to his face, watching him intently. It was short lived.

"Afterwards, the town discovered how Enid had been treating the children and decided it would be distasteful to rebuild the orphanage," Amanda continued, smirking when she saw Jones' shoulders slump in defeat as Dag turned his attention back to her. "So the land stayed vacant for thirty years until a land developer bought it to put up a housing community."

"Three men died during construction," Jones jumped in, stepping forward eagerly as Dag's focus returned to him. "Two were found in the basement with what looked like chain marks on their skin. The third died from…"

"Smoke inhalation," Amanda blurted out. Jones glared at her as she stepped away from the wall. "After the development was completed, five more people were killed, all of their deaths suspicious. It was then that the townspeople discovered that the woman they'd known as Enid Harman wasn't who she said she was."

"Enid Harman had been a witch," Jones eagerly jumped in. This time, Amanda didn't look angry that he'd interrupted her again. She focused on Dag, watching the older hunter intently. "Enid, or rather, Olivia Hunt, had been accused of practicing witchcraft in Salem, was sentenced to die by hanging, but disappeared before the townspeople of Salem had their chance to carry out the sentence.

"As the locals began to dig deeper into the truth about Enid or Olivia or whatever her name was, they realized that what she'd really been doing was using the children for spells and rituals."

"It was discovered that on the night of the fire," Amanda finally cut in, "Enid had been performing a ritual she believed would give her immortality." Amanda stared up into Dag's face, fixing her fierce blue eyes on his dark brown ones. "Something went horribly wrong, obviously, and the ritual was never completed."

"So why did the town's priest dig up her corpse and place her remains inside the reliquary you were so delicately trying to procure?" Dag asked, his tone light and expectant. Amanda and Jones both knew that Dag already had the full story of Enid Harman/Olivia Hunt and that he was testing them, making sure that they had done their research.

"Father Tompkins, the last official priest in Colmar, believed that it was the restless spirit of Olivia that was murdering people living inside the newly built development. He sanctioned a box be built, the reliquary that we were trying to get out of the library, to try and seal Olivia's spirit within it," Amanda answered after a beat. She glanced over at Jones and watched as embarrassment colored his cheeks.

"So what went wrong?" Dag asked.

"I found the box and broke it out of the display case. That part was easy," Jones stated, his voice carrying none of the eagerness it had before. He continued to stare at his feet, his lanky frame huddled in on itself as he stood with his hands shoved deep into the front pockets of his blue jeans. "But what I didn't figure on was ol' Olivia being attached to the box."

"You always have to assume that the spirit will be attached to their remains, Jones," Dag explained, his voice reminiscent of a professor or teacher as he looked down at the kid. He reached out, clapped a hand onto the boy's shoulder, and gave him a smile when Jones finally tore his eyes away from his sneakers to look up into Dag's face. "It's okay, son. Some hunts don't go as perfect as we planned."

"I don't get it," Amanda cried out in exasperation. "We had all the details, everything planned to the "T"…"

"But did you make sure that you had _all_ the details," Dag asked, raising his eyebrows as he stared at the two teenagers. Jones and Amanda exchanged confused looks before turning back to Dag. He sighed and shook his head. "There was a reason I warned you two to stay away from this job."

"What?" Jones asked before he could stop himself.

"Well, for one: you didn't know that after the deaths stopped at the development, that after Father Tompkins sealed Enid Harman's bones within that reliquary, the killings didn't just stop completely." Dag paused, watching the two young hunters in front of him as they began to wilt under this knew onslaught of information. The corner of Dag's mouth twitched with the ghost of a smile.

"There were three more fatalities until the box was secured inside this very library." Dag pointed into the interior of the library, into the shadows of the stacks. "You also didn't know that reliquary was placed inside the display box on _top_ of a protective sigil, containing the spirit of Enid Harman inside, keeping it chained down and safe."

"Dammit, Jones! You didn't bother to look at the case before you tried to take the box?" Amanda yelled, her voice echoing around them.

"I didn't know…" Jones mumbled, blanching under Amanda's rage. "If I had known…"

"It's okay, Jones," Dag stated, raising his hand at Amanda as she opened her mouth to rage some more. "You two are young. You're going to make mistakes, but those mistakes need to be ones that aren't going to cost you, or others, their lives. Tonight should be a good learning experience for you." Amanda growled in frustration and Dag turned hard brown eyes on her. "For _both _of you."

The storm continued to blow around them, but it was dying down. The thunder that rumbled in the sky was from a distance now, the lightning getting less and less frequent. Dag stared down at Jones and Amanda, watching them with intense eyes. "Now, I need to know if you were actually able to remove the box from the display case, Jones, or if it's still secured above the sigil?"

"I…well…" Jones stammered out.

"Did you move the damn box or not?" Amanda shrieked. Jones slowly nodded his head yes.

Immediately, the atmosphere around them changed. It became charged with electricity, an energy, that radiated out of Dag. Gone was the calm, amused look and in its place was a cold, calculating power. He reached inside his jacket and brought out a nylon pouch about the size of a grapefruit and a bottle of lighter fluid.

"I want you two to listen to me," Dag barked, his voice hard and commanding. Both teenagers reacted to the tone, their postures straight, their attention focused on Dag like soldiers snapping to attention under their superior. "I parked my car at the end of Maple Ave, two blocks that way," Dag lifted a finger and pointed straight across the parking lot. "I want you to go get the car and bring it here." Amanda nodded her head and reached for the set of keys that Dag was now offering her.

"You should have back up," Jones said hesitantly.

"I'll be all right. Just go get the car and bring it here." With that, Dag turned and stepped through the broken door into the library. A second later, a beam of light flashed on and pointed back towards the entrance.

"Get a move on," Dag called from the middle of the library, his flashlight bouncing from one face to the other. Both teenagers took off at a jog, disappearing into the black night.

**V V V V V V V V V V V V V V V V V V V V**

Henry Dagwood had been a hunter for almost twenty-six years when the Apocalypse began. Dag, to his close friends and family, had killed werewolves, vampires, djinn; everything that haunted your nightmares and even some you couldn't even imagine existed, and managed a meager life on the outskirts of humanity.

When the Apocalypse started, it didn't start with a bang like the high-powered movie gurus created in their blockbuster movies. Hellfire didn't rain from the skies. Locusts didn't descend on millions of people, although there were outbreaks of the pests destroying plants and crops all over the world. When the Apocalypse started, nothing changed. Nothing that the normal world could see anyway.

Sure, there were more suicides, more murders, more overall death and destruction, but the regular people - the ones that didn't know that the things that went bump in the night really did go bump - just chalked all that up to humans being humans and dismissed it. They didn't know that their neighbor Bob, who stabbed his wife and two kids to death before putting a gun in his mouth, was actually possessed by a demon. Or that the teacher who opened fire on his nine o'clock History 101 class did it because he was compelled to.

No, the June and Ward Cleavers of the world, with their two-point-five kids and their cookie cutter lawns, were blissfully ignorant to the bleeding underbelly of the supernatural world.

"Lucky bastards," Dag muttered under his breath as the beam of his flashlight bounced over the books and magazines that filled the bookshelves of the Colmar County Public Library.

The building was eerily quiet, the storm that had been hanging overhead moving off as dawn began its approach over the horizon. A faint golden light crept into the library through the broken front doors, reaching into the dark corners and slowly chasing away the night.

Dag made his way towards the back of the library, zigzagging between the stacks, his chocolate brown eyes focused and alert. The drawstrings to the bag of rock salt he carried hung around his right wrist. In that hand, he held a bottle of lighter fluid and a black Maglite. In his left, he clutched a Smith and Wesson 9mm loaded with consecrated iron bullets, the gun already cocked and the safety off.

As Dag rounded the end of the last set of bookshelves, he saw her. Enid Harman, or rather, Olivia Hunt stood beside the display case that had previously housed the box that trapped both her and her remains. It now lay on the floor at the base of the display, the box propped on its side.

When she was alive, she would have been considered attractive, pretty even. Her black hair was tied back in a bun, the high-necked white blouse and long black skirt accentuating her slender figure. If it weren't for the ancient clothing and haunting brown eyes, Olivia would have reminded Dag of his late mother, Suzanna Dagwood; her appearance and the way Olivia paced, like a caged wild animal, her face an ugly twisted mask.

"Looks like more than a hundred years of pent up rage don't bode well for the complexion, huh?" Dag stated to the ghost. He didn't expect to get an answer so when Olivia screamed and sent several encyclopedias flying about the room, Dag merely raised his gun and fired, the iron rounds dispersing the ghost of Olivia Hunt with an inhuman shriek.

Dag knew he had only a matter of seconds before Olivia rematerialized and started her temper tantrum all over again. He rushed forward and dropped to his knees, laying his flashlight, the bottle of lighter fluid, and gun on the tile floor. Dag yanked the bag off his wrist and set it next to the lighter fluid, preferring to keep his gun at the ready while he tried to figure out how to break the ornate iron lock on the reliquary.

The box itself looked rather ordinary. It was made of balsam and about the size of a toolbox. Intricate carvings were etched into the lid and sides that, to an ordinary eye, would seem like vines and flowers. Dag knew better. He knew that the carvings were actually an ancient Latin prayer, the words strung along the box to form the protective barrier that had once contained the spirit of an evil witch.

As Dag lifted the box, keeping an eye out for the ghost, he noticed that the hinges were broken. They had rusted clean through do to poor upkeep and temperature control and when young Jones had dropped the box, the hinges had finally snapped.

"So that's how you got out," Dag muttered under his breath. He opened the box and began to pour salt over the ivory white bones inside.

Suddenly, the air around Dag turned frigid, his breath rising in clouds around him. He froze, raising his gun and searching the room around him. His eyes were so focused on the darkness that he didn't see Olivia standing behind him. She screamed, a primal cry that raised the hair on his arms and neck before lunging at Dag. He spun, trying to bring his gun up, but with a swipe of her hand, Olivia sent the gun flying from his hand.

Olivia shrieked again and swatted Dag's head, sending it back into the bottom of the granite display case. Stars exploded across his vision, his head a throbbing mass above his shoulders. Olivia came at him again, her face twisted and ugly, her hands curled into claws.

Just as she was about to descend on Dag there was a loud bang. Olivia screamed and disappeared, her primal cry of pain leaving an echo through the library. Dag blinked, trying to clear his blurry vision, and saw Amanda standing there holding his gun.

"Thanks, kid," Dag groaned as he pushed himself up. Amanda rushed to his side and helped him sit up, propping him against the display case. "Did you bring the car?"

"Yessir," Amanda replied automatically. "We waited twenty minutes and then I figured I should come in and see if you needed any help." Dag chuckled at the sheepish grin that played along Amanda's lips.

"I'm glad you did, Mandy."

He pushed himself up and grabbed the bottle of lighter fluid. As Amanda scanned the library, keeping watch for Olivia's spirit, Dag pulled out a small, silver lighter.

"Rest in pieces, you crazy bitch," Dag spat out as he tossed the lighter into the reliquary. The flames licked hungrily across the bones, consuming everything in bright orange and red.

As the flames consumed the skull of Olivia Hunt, the eye sockets glowing a bright yellow, they heard a crash from the left. Amanda spun towards the sound, raising the gun to point it at the spirit. Olivia screamed, her shriek reverberating around them like a sonic boom and charged Amanda. Instinctively, Amanda curled in on herself, the gun forgotten in her hand, and waited for the ghost to send her flying.

Nothing happened.

Slowly, Amanda lowered her arms, which she had flung up around her head, and looked around.

"She's gone, Mandy."

Amanda turned towards Dag's voice, a sheepish look creeping over her face. "Sorry," she mumbled, embarrassed that she had reacted so…childishly. Dag staggered to his feet and Amanda shot up, immediately offering him some assistance as he began to teeter.

"Let's get the hell out of here, what do ya say?" Dag said, giving Amanda a small smile.

Amanda nodded her head and returned the smile with a bright one of her own. Together, with Dag's arm draped over Amanda's narrow shoulders, they made their way out of the Colmar County Public Library and into the dawning day. As Dag eased himself into the backseat of his Toyota Corolla, Jones riding shotgun and Amanda behind the wheel, he thought to himself that, so far, the Apocalypse didn't seem so bad.

* * *

***So, this first chapter is just a set up to the rest of the story and is sorely lacking our two favorite hunters. I promise - they will be in the next one! I am hoping to post a new chapter once every two weeks (or perhaps a bit sooner depending on my buddies _Muse _and _Inspiration_) so I hope you will check back then. I will post my Musical Playlist at the completion of this story. Thanks to all of you who want and will keep on reading! You're support will determine whether I continue posting so...Thanks!***


	2. Chapter 2

_For both **Disclaimer** and **Spoiler Alert**, please see Chapter 1._

The boys are brought in in this chapter (and will remain in almost every one after it) so anyone who may have been a little disappointed that they weren't in the first chapter can rest assure...

Please review - whether you loved it, hated it, or whatever emotions it evoked... Thanks!

**

* * *

**

**Two**

The pounding bass of Metallic's "My Apocalypse" roused Sam Winchester from his sleep, James Hetfield's screaming voice blasting from the speakers of the Impala. His older brother, Dean, bounced his fingers in time to the music, the silver ring he always wore on the ring finger of his right hand, clicking each time it tapped the steering wheel.

"Morning, sunshine," Dean shouted over the music. Sam groaned and scrubbed his face, trying to force the remnants of sleep away. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Dean reach over and twist a knob on the stereo, raising the music to a headache-inducing volume.

"Dude, do you mind?" Sam shouted, reaching towards the car's stereo. Without even looking, Dean whipped his hand out and swatted Sam's hand away. Sam glared at Dean and shook his head.

"Just let the song finish."

Reaching up, Sam pushed his long, dark brown hair from his forehead, his thumbs stopping at his temples. He began to rub in a circular pattern, hoping to hold off the migraine he could feel building behind his eyes.

It wasn't the music that was making Sam's head hurt, not really if he was going to be honest with himself. No, what was making Sam's head throb in time to the tune blasting from the speakers of the Impala was the utter lack of restful sleep and the continuous weight of what he and his brother were trying to accomplish. Sam and Dean Winchester were trying to stop the Apocalypse.

Well, trying to stop it from finishing at least.

Finally, Metallic finished and, as a Linkin Park song began, Dean reached over and twisted the stereo off, leaving the inside of the car in an eerie silence. "Your head bothering you?"

Sam glanced over at Dean, catching the suspicious look his brother was giving him before turning away. He watched the trees and ranch houses that lined the off-the-map route they were taking through rural Minnesota and sighed. Things had been tense between the two of them for a long time, but Sam had hoped that they were past this particular issue.

"Just need to get some real sleep. You know, like in an actual bed with pillows and sheets."

Dean chuckled, which raised Sam's interest and he turned to look at his brother again. There was a sly grin stretching across Dean lips, one that Sam knew very well.

"What?"

"You just might get your wish. While you were off in La La land, Bobby called," Dean explained, glancing over to meet Sam's hazel gaze. "Thought we might be up to checking out a job in Dover, Delaware."

Sam raised an eyebrow, waiting for Dean to continue with the details. When Dean was less than forthcoming, Sam cleared his throat. "And what's Bobby think is going on in Dover?"

"Demons, " Dean stated simply.

There was no need for further guessing on Sam's part as to the sudden electric atmosphere that had invaded the classic car nor the clenched and flexing muscles that Sam could see working along Dean's jaw. Sam sighed and reached into the backseat, tugging his laptop out of his brown leather bag and plopping it onto his lap. He plugged in the wireless internet card and began a search of articles and news reports for Dover.

Within minutes, he had a large selection to choose from, all of them demonic omens. "Cattle mutilations, electrical storms… Definitely a demon in the area," Sam muttered, looking up at the blacktop racing towards, and then underneath, the black Chevy as Dean floored the gas pedal, opening the car up a little to hear her purr. "Looks like Bobby found himself one hell of a demon too, by the looks of things."

Dean turned to look at Sam, turned and looked him dead in the eye for a full thirty seconds, before his green eyes returned to the front windshield and road before them. "Think it's smart to go gallivanting after a demon when they're all out there looking for us?"

Sam frowned, confused by his brother's words. "Dean, it's our job."

"Yeah, I know, but it just feels…" Dean shook his head, his mouth set in a thin line, his eyes hard. He reached up and ran a hand through his short, brown hair, running it all the way to the base of his neck were he stopped and rubbed at the tension that had suddenly set up shop in the muscles of his shoulders and neck.

"If you didn't want to take the hunt, why'd you say anything about it, then?" Sam stated, his whole body turned towards his brother, his arm stretched across the back of the black leather seat. The laptop still lay on his lap, the bright screen flashing with the muted news report video he'd pulled up before being distracted.

"I don't know," Dean growled out in frustration, pressing on the gas pedal just a little bit more. Sam slumped against the back of the seat, the fight he felt building ebbing away as he watched his older brother fight with the internal demons they both had accumulated.

"We can call Bobby and tell him to send someone else. Maybe Rufus will…"

"No," Dean snapped, flipping on the windshield wipers as the skies opened up and a torrential rain began to pound down on them. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly, clearly trying to defuse the anger he could feel building within him. "We should go. Bobby called us and this is our thing."

He glanced over at Sam for a moment and shrugged.

"Not like it'll be the first time we've marched into the lion's den."

Sam shook his head, a frown still pulling down the corners of his mouth. "No, it wouldn't be the first time."

"So what did you find out?" Dean asked, clearly trying to change the direction of their discussion. "Bobby didn't really go too deep into it."

"Well," Sam started, pulling up a newspaper article dated three days earlier. "On February 11th, Joseph Raines went outside to find that his entire herd of cows had been slaughtered, not a single one left whole." Switching screens, Sam pulled up another news video. "And two day before that, a family in Newark was found butchered in their beds, the only person spared was the ten year old daughter."

Sam winced when the reporter's face switched to a picture of a tiny blonde haired, blue eyed girl. The girl's picture was replaced with live news feed as the poor child was taken from the house, a gray blanket wrapped around her slender shoulders and a shell shocked look freezing her delicate features.

_She looked so innocent before…_Sam thought sadly, stopping the video and switching to another newspaper article. He squinted at the screen, reading the information twice before looking up at the road ahead of them, his face paling.

"What is it?" Dean asked, catching the change in Sam's demeanor.

Sam ground his teeth together, his jaw clenched painfully tight.

"Sam?" Dean growled out, feeling the tension slide from his shoulders down the rest of his back and turning his stomach to stone.

Sam glanced down at the computer screen one last time before looking over at Dean, feeling his heartbeat pick up a little. "The police believe the little girl is responsible for the murders of her parents and twin brothers."

Dean frowned in confusion. It wasn't the first time a demon had possessed a little kid and committed such atrocities. Lilith, the white-eyed demon that had held the deed to Dean's soul before his tour in Hell and the one who's death at the hands of Sam had been the final broken seal that released Lucifer, had made it her specialty. For mere pleasure, actually. He dropped his right hand off the steering wheel and turned his body towards Sam, waiting for his little brother to explain his sudden apparent anxiousness.

"Her name was Joanne Beth Hardelle."

Sam threw his left hand out to the dashboard, using it to brace his body as the Impala came to a sudden screeching halt. His right hand gripped his laptop, his fingers pressing random keys as he tried to keep it from flying off his lap. He looked over at Dean, holding his breath, his heart in his throat.

"They think that's…funny?" Dean bit out angrily.

He pounded the steering wheel with both hands, his jaw clenched tightly, his eyes ablaze. When it seemed his anger had simmered a bit, Sam opened his mouth to speak. Dean turned on him, his eyes still fierce with rage, and Sam felt himself involuntarily cringe back against the passenger door, the words stopping in his throat.

"We're going to kill this bitch."

Sam nodded, not sure if his voice would work if he tried to reply and went back to tapping keys on his laptop, his eyes focused directly at the screen. He heard the Impala's door open with a metallic creak and felt the car shift as his brother got out of the driver's seat. Looking up, he watched as Dean paced angrily in front of the car, getting drenched by the falling rain.

Sam understood what Dean was feeling; a part of him felt the same way. The name had been a specific dig at them, for sure, salt in a still openly bleeding wound. It had only been a few weeks since, trapped inside a hardware store during a mission to stop Lucifer, Sam and Dean had been forced to leave behind friends and fellow hunters, Jo and Ellen Harvelle.

Jo, who had been mortally wounded while trying to help Dean get away from hellhounds, had made the difficult decision to sacrifice herself to destroy the beasts and give Sam and Dean the chance to get out and away. Her mother had stayed by her side and the two women died in a fiery explosion they'd set themselves. It had been a hard loss, for all of them, but more so for Dean.

Already carrying the weight of being the archangel Michael's true vessel and knowing the Sam was meant to be the same for Lucifer, Dean had taken the consequences of their disastrous assassination attempt on Lucifer and his current meat-suit as his personal responsibility.

Both Sam and Dean had lost many friends and family to the battle between good and evil, more than either dared to count, but seeing the small concrete and brick building go up in a orange blast had broken something in Dean that Sam wasn't sure anyone would ever be able to repair. It was heartbreaking to think that the demons were now making fun of this loss.

Dean finally stopped pacing and just stood in the headlights of the Impala, his back to the windshield. Sam sighed and closed his laptop, reaching up to pinch the bridge of his nose. _You're not the only one who wishes he could change things_, Sam thought sadly as he looked back up at his brother. Sam reached over and cranked his window down a little, the cool breeze that flowed into the warm car bringing the smell of rain and farmland with it.

"Dean, get in the car," Sam yelled out the window. When Dean's shoulders hunched forward, Sam added, "Please, man." Dean nodded his head and strolled to the driver's side, the door opening with a loud creak. He dropped into the driver's seat, his soaked jacket making a squishing sound against the leather and put the car into gear.

Sam hesitated, knowing he should say something, but not sure how or what. For the first time in a long time, Sam Winchester was at a loss as to what he should do next. As the Impala coasted down the road once more, Sam watched his brother's face, his hazel eyes focused in the darkening interior.

"I really hate when you do that, you know."

Sam shrugged and turned to look out the windshield. "I'm just tying to figure some things out."

"Yeah? And that requires you to sit and stare at me?" Dean asked, taking the on-ramp for the highway faster than both he and Sam knew he should have. Tires squealed and the car fishtailed a bit before Dean got it under control. "Look, I know I'm incredibly attractive, but when it's my brother gawking at me, I start to get uncomfortable."

Sam shook his head, feeling a smirk pulling at the corners of his mouth. "Sometimes I just can't help myself, man. You're just so damn good looking."

Dean snorted and shoved Sam's shoulder. The tension seemed to lift a little and Sam took a deep breath, feeling like he could expand his lungs a little more. They sat in silence for a few minutes, both deep in thought. Finally, Sam sighed and turned back to Dean.

"So, do you want to drive straight through or have me find someplace to stop for the night?

Dean tapped his ring against the steering wheel and Sam recognized that his brother was thinking, weighing the two options and trying to figure out which one would be best.

"I'm good to drive straight through, but if you really want to stop somewhere…" Dean trailed off, glancing over at Sam in the darkening car.

"No, we can drive straight through," Sam replied, feeling his body react to the decision as soon as he'd said it aloud. His lower back and legs began to tingle, the muscles in his neck and shoulders tightening as he prepared to spend another several hours trapped inside the classic car.

Dean eyed Sam for a moment and Sam made sure to keep his face impassive, trying to hide the pain and weariness he felt through every inch of his body. He knew Dean was feeling the same way, that Dean was probably feeling far worse than Sam because he hadn't been getting any sleep at all, but if his brother wasn't going to say "uncle" than neither was Sam.

"Point the way then, Miss Daisy."

**V V V V V V V V V V V V V V**

Dean Winchester's eyes burned with tiredness, his eyelids feeling like they were made of lead. He tried to stifle a yawn, hiding it behind his hand as he turned his face away to look out the side window. Dean didn't want Sam to see how truly exhausted he felt. He didn't want him to know that he was almost running on empty, dangerously low in his energy reserves.

Sam's nose was stuck in his laptop, the tapping of keys the only sound in the car besides their light breathing. Dean reached over and turned on the radio, hoping that a little hard rock would revive him. Motley Crue's "Shout At The Devil" blasted out of the speakers. Seeing Sam flinch at the sudden pounding music, Dean reached over and lowered the volume until he could barely hear Vince Neil's voice.

"It looks like there's a small motel located right on the outskirts of Dover that won't be too expensive," Sam stated a few seconds later. Dean nodded his head, but kept his eyes on the road.

"Translation: We have to use cash instead of credit," Dean said, tapping his fingers to the song that followed Motley Crue.

"Pretty much, yeah."

Sam sighed and closed his laptop, removing the last bit of light illuminating the interior and leaving Dean with a brief flash of anxiety. He squared his shoulders and gripped the steering wheel, pulling himself straight in the driver's seat. Memories of his time in Hell, although less frequent, still snuck up on Dean.

"Wasn't there a friend of dad's that lived in Delaware?"

Dean could feel Sam's eyes on his face, but kept his eyes on the road ahead of them. After a moment, he heard Sam sigh.

"I think there was a guy he was in the Corp with, but I don't remember what his name was." Dean could practically hear the gears turning in Sam's head as his brother tried to find a reason behind Dean's question.

"Henry something," Dean offered, trying to remember one of the long ago conversations he'd had with John.

"Dagwood, Henry Dagwood!" Sam declared, a triumphant smile pulling at the corners of his lips. "Dad called him Dag for short."

Dean nodded his head in agreement, the name tickling something else in the back of his mind. "Yeah, that sounds about right." Dean frowned, trying to prize the information he knew was tucked inside his tired brain forward so he could stop the nagging feeling he'd developed at the sound of the man's name. Finally, he gave up, knowing that eventually, if he just stopped trying to force the information to the front, it would come.

"It wasn't Dover, though," Sam added after a moment's silence. He fidgeted in his seat, trying to stretch his long legs out in front of him without making it obvious to Dean. Dean shook his head and opened his mouth to ask if Sam wanted him to pull over when the information finally came crashing to the forefront.

"It was Silver Springs," Dean stated in a low voice. He saw Sam turn towards him, saw his brother's hazel eyes focusing on his profile as they passed under the streetlamps, their eerie yellow lights illuminating the interior of the Impala in brief flashes.

"Yeah…that's right." He frowned at Dean, waiting for what he could see working through his brother's memories. When Dean wasn't forthcoming, he cleared his throat. "What is it, man?"

Dean shook his head, not sure if he wanted to tell Sam what he knew about Henry Dagwood. John had never told either of his boys much about his time in the Corp, only caring to disclose the expertise he'd learned. But there was the occasional story that he would share, when the booze or exhaustion would loosen his tongue enough for a curious juvenile Dean's pestering questions to work them free. One of them had been about Dag and another man, Franklin Hobby.

"Dean?" Sam called his brother's name, trying to get his attention again. Dean shook his head, trying to shake away the story, and glanced over at Sam.

"Yeah?"

"You gonna share with the class, man?"

Dean gripped the steering wheel a little tighter, his knuckles flashing white before he released his tight grip and sat back against the seat, draping his right arm casually over its top.

"Dad told me a story once. I think I was about ten or eleven." Dean tapped his index finger on the seat, feeling its soft, supple leather under the calluses. "We were in Rhode Island, I think. He'd been working a poltergeist job and he'd left us at this crappy motel with no TV for, like, three days. By the time he got back, I was going stir crazy."

Dean took a deep breath and switched hands on the steering wheel, letting his left hand rest in his lap. "It was late when he got in, almost three, I think. Remember how dad always had this way of sneaking in? How we'd just wake up and find him passed out on the couch or spare bed or whatever, never even knowing that he was there?"

Dean saw Sam nod slowly, acknowledging the memory, but not speaking. He was waiting for the story to continue.

"Well, this wasn't one of those times." Dean scoffed, rubbing the heel of his palm against the vinyl, feeling the hum of the radio and the engine flowing into his hand. "Dad was wasted. Came in and knocked over everything between him and the door. It was a damn miracle he didn't wake you up. But then again, you always did sleep like the dead when you were a kid." Dean smirked and shook his head, trying to keep himself on track as other memories flooded forward and vied for attention.

"So, Dad comes in, loud and loaded, and I'm not sure what to do. I mean, this is a golden opportunity for me. I can ask questions without getting too much resistance or I can be the dutiful son and help him get into bed to sleep it off.

"For once, I said 'screw it,' and I took Door Number One. I got dad to sit down on one of the rickety dining chairs and helped him get his jacket off, all the while trying to think of a good question, one good one that I'd been dying to ask.

"Finally it hit me. I wanted to hear something from when he was in the Corp. So I just asked him something simple, something that I didn't think would open too many doors." Dean paused, switching hands on the wheel again.

"What'd you ask him?" Sam prompted, eagerness dripping from his voice.

"What his first mission was?" Dean shook his head, putting both hands on the wheel and rubbing his palms on it, trying to relieve the moist heat he could feel building all over his body as the memory pulled him under, making him feel like that nervous kid all over again.

"At first I thought he wasn't going to answer, that I'd misjudged just how wasted he was and was going to get chewed out for asking him something like that. I couldn't even meet his gaze for a few minutes, that's how convinced I was he was going to let into me, man. But then dad took a deep breath and just…started talking.

"It was like he'd been hoping I'd ask. The words just poured from his lips, flowing out of him, and I sat stunned, staring at him. The story he told me…man, it was…strange, Sam. Like our kind of strange." Dean shook his head and glanced over at Sam. "Dad said that while they were on this mission, his buddy Dag and this Hobby-guy went at it. Dad said that they were working sentry duty together, alone outside the tents in some tropical hell hole, while everyone else was trying to catch some shuteye.

"You gotta remember, Sam…dad didn't know the shit he found out after mom. None of them did. None of them could believe what Dag was saying.

"He told them that Franklin had attacked him, that he'd been talking crazy about blood and death, and that his eyes had gone from brown to black. Dag said that he'd acted in self-defense, that when Franklin had stopped beating on him long enough to reach for the bowie knife he had clipped to his belt, Dag had used his own, stabbing Franklin in the chest and throat until the man fell over dead."

"Demon," Sam stated simply, shaking his head as Dean's story soaked into his mind. Dean nodded and, using Sam's momentary distraction, stifled another yawn.

"Yeah, demon," Dean continued when Sam's eyes settled on him once more. "But they didn't know that, didn't believe in that stuff. They all just thought Dag had gone off the deep end, murdered his brother-in-arms during some twisted mental breakdown.

"The poor guy wound up getting court-martialed and was ordered back to the states for trial. Thing is, he disappeared, went AWOL, before they had the chance to get him on a plane. Dad said that when he learned the truth, when he learned about vampires and ghosts and demons, that he felt like he was somehow responsible for ruining Dag's life.

"So dad being dad, he sought the man out. After some heavy research, dad discovered Dag had been back in the states for years, that he'd been living in Silver Springs, Delaware."

"Lemme guess: dad found out that his good ol' pal Dag had become a hunter," Sam stated, his voice cold and filled with anger. Dean nodded in the dark car, knowing that Sam could see his acknowledgement. "And that's why dad really dragged us to Rhode Island. To meet up with his old friend…"

"No, there _was_ a poltergeist, but the job wasn't the whole reason we went."

Dean reached up and scrubbed his face with a calloused hand, trying to rub away the feelings he felt flooding through him as other memories bounced around his head - memories of jobs John Winchester had dragged them halfway across the country to work; jobs that had caused injuries, that had broken lines and boundaries no child should ever have had to cross.

There was still a fire burning deep within Dean, its flames colored with anger and resentment at their father for what he'd thrust on Dean, what he'd dumped on his shoulders with each breath, what he'd done to both his and Sam's fates. Dean exhaled and tried to relax, tried to push his feelings of guilt and rage and hopelessness, down deep so he could keep the calm, calculated mask in place.

"So what happened?" Sam asked, breaking into Dean's reverie. Dean glanced over at Sam, caught the look of suspicion on his younger brother's face before Sam forced it away.

"Dad met up with Dag, apologized for not believing him. Dag told him that it was all in the past and that _he_ was sorry that dad was on the same path, that mom's death had sent him down it. They'd gone out drinking, and traveling down memory lane, I guess," Dean shrugged and signaled for the turnoff, easing the Impala across the two lane highway and onto the off-ramp. "I think dad kept in contact with the guy because I remember him mentioning him a few times through the years, but I don't think they ever met up again. And, the next morning, when I asked dad if he remembered our conversation, he didn't. Not one word of it."

"Or he just said he didn't," Sam grumbled, turning to stare out his side window.

Dean nodded his head and rolled his shoulders, trying to work loose the tight muscles in his neck. Sam suddenly sat up straighter, his eyes focused on the large green sign they were approaching.

"The turn-off for the motel is coming up on the left," he stated, his tone slightly shocked.

"I know," Dean replied, glancing over at Sam when his brother turned his head to look at him. "I do listen when you talk, Sam."

"Really?" Sam asked, his voice hinting at mild amusement. "'Cause usually I have to repeat myself a few times…"

Dean's lips curled into a ghost of his trademark grin. "Well, okay. Sometimes I listen..."

* * *

***Of course, more to come in a few weeks (or sooner depending on my buddies _Muse _and _Inspiration_) so I hope you will check back then. I will post my Musical Playlist at the completion of this story. Thanks to all of you who have kept on reading!***


	3. Chapter 3

_For both **Disclaimer** and **Spoiler Alert**, please see Chapter 1._

Wow, I'm sticking to my two week promise! Yay me! (Hey - Everyone needs a little self praise once in a while, right?) My other two stories were written long before I ever found this website and so I was able to post it all at once instead of by chapter completion. I'm trying my hand at sticking to a deadline so, please, bare with me!

Okay, so with that said, this chapter may seem a little slow. Please keep in mind that I'm writing this almost as though this is a novel you may pick up at a book store. I promise the action will come and there will be plenty of intrigue and twists ahead...

Please review - whether you loved it, hated it, or whatever emotions it evoked... Thanks!

**

* * *

**

**Three**

Sam rolled over onto his back, his hazel eyes focusing on the water stain over his head. Sleep had become a commodity denied to him and so he spent a lot of time staring at the ceilings or scenery around him. He glanced around the darkened motel room, taking in the motif, which was a mish-mash of odds-and-ends furniture, the décor based more on minimal grime than any true design. The stain above his head was among company, the ceiling above his bed covered in stains that caused him to involuntarily shiver when he spent too much time thinking about their origins.

The motel, while extremely easy on their wallets, was way below even the Winchester standard of living; the bed comfortable if you liked feeling like you were sleeping on a bed of nails and feather pillows that had an odd odor of cigarette smoke, stale take-out, and sweat that burned in Sam's nose. He tried matching his breathing to Dean's, the slow steady rise and fall of air from his brother's chest usually relaxing enough to lull him to sleep anywhere. Instead, it only made Sam feel more anxious, more aware of the claustrophobic turn his life had taken.

Rolling over onto his side, Sam tossed the covers off and hung his long legs over the side of the bed, resting his feet on the cold carpet. The geriatric heater kicked over with a clang, chugging tepid air out of its vents and causing the cold air to swirl around Sam's bare ankles. He stifled a yawn and stood up, his back and knees making an audible popping sound as he did.

Shuffling on heavy legs, Sam made his way across the room to the small, black card table that was supposed to serve as the dining table and desk and opened his laptop. There were things about Dean's story, about his recanting of their father's first mission, that hadn't set well with Sam. It wasn't that he thought Dean had lied, just that there seemed to be more to the story than maybe even Dean was aware of.

Beginning with the names they had, Sam started with performing a thorough background search on both Henry Dagwood and Franklin Hobby. Both histories he could find on the men seemed generic and benign. Skimming over the details he already knew – that both men had been in the Marines, that Henry Dagwood was wanted for the murder of Franklin Hobby, and that Henry Dagwood had gone AWOL – Sam managed to only find out minimal additional information. He now knew that Franklin Hobby had been one of three children and had grown up in Louisville, Kentucky and that Henry Dagwood had a younger brother named Jasper who still lived in Ocean City, New Jersey where they'd been raised by a single mother.

After a few more hours of digging, as the sun began to seep through the holes in the brown curtains, Sam closed his laptop and slumped back against the chair. He hadn't come up with anything else that would address the nagging feeling he got in the pit of his stomach when he thought about Henry Dagwood. Dean stirred and rolled onto his back, his right hand automatically going to his eyes. Sam watched his brother use the thumb and index finger of his right hand to squeeze the bridge of his nose, blinking his green eyes up at the ceiling.

"You get any sleep?" Dean's gruff voice asked a second later. He tilted his head down, looking at Sam with guarded eyes over the end of his bed.

"Some, yeah," Sam lied.

He could feel Dean's eyes taking in his disheveled appearance and the dark circles Sam knew were only getting darker beneath his eyes. Not wanting to start yet another argument with Dean about the reasons why Sam suddenly got less sleep than his older brother, who was still haunted by his time in hell as well as all the terrible things that had happened to both of them since Sam set Lucifer free, Sam cleared his throat and got to his feet, heading for his duffle bag at the foot of his bed.

"I'm gonna head in and take a shower."

"Yeah, okay," Dean grunted, still lying on his back and watching Sam intently. The fact that Dean hadn't argued with Sam about who was taking their shower first only further fueled Sam's desire to hurry into the small bathroom. He gathered a clean pair of jeans and a black and yellow paisley and headed into the bathroom, grateful to close the door and be able to hide for a few moments from Dean's ever suspicious gaze.

The hot water did little to relax the muscles coiled tightly in Sam's neck and shoulders, the showerhead having barely any pressure even as Sam turned it to full blast. He toweled dry and dressed quickly, avoiding meeting his own image in the cracked mirror. He didn't need to see the exhaustion to know it was there.

By the time Sam exited the bathroom, Dean was already dressed and tying the laces of his boots. He looked up at Sam's emergence and a small flicker of emotion flashed across his stoic features before he quickly forced it away.

"You need to do something, Sam," Dean growled out as he stood up and grabbed his .45 off the bed, checking the clip, chambering a round and then tucking it behind his back into the waistband of his jeans.

"About what?" Sam asked, playing dumb. If he could avoid an argument, he would, but he also wasn't in the mood for any of Dean's crude remarks either.

"You need to get some sleep, Sam."

Dean grabbed his leather jacket off the back of the chair on which he'd draped it the night before and slipped it on, fishing the keys to the Impala out of one of the pockets and twirling them around his middle finger. He continued to dodge Sam's gaze.

"I get enough, Dean."

"If your eyes sink any farther into your head, they're gonna disappear." Dean sighed and finally turned to face Sam. He frowned and shoved his hands into the front pockets of his jeans. "I need you to be sharp, Sam…"

"I'm fine, Dean," Sam snapped, feeling his patience waning. He took a deep breath and exhaled through his nose, trying to keep himself from getting angry. "I've got your back, all right?"

Dean nodded at Sam, yanked his hands out his pockets, and headed for the door. "Yeah, all right," he ground out. "Whatever," he added under his breath. Sam rolled his eyes, grabbed his jacket, and hurried outside after Dean. He'd barely managed to get into the passenger seat before Dean was peeling out of the motel parking lot, heading back towards the highway.

Part of the reason Sam found sleep so hard to find was that he didn't want to. Sleep meant dreaming and dreaming meant Jess. Or Lucifer, for that matter. The fallen angel had used Sam's one true blissful place, his one safe haven, to taunt him with the memories of the one woman he'd truly ever loved just to talk to Sam. He tried to use Jess's image to lure Sam into a sense of security he didn't allow himself during his waking hours, betraying Sam in the most personal way, just to have a few words. It had been a violation Sam wasn't willing to let the devil use again. Shrugging away the memories and the feelings he got, Sam cleared his throat and looked over at Dean.

"So where do you want to go first? Precinct or crime scene?"

Dean shrugged his shoulders. "Crime scene will get us the most information."

Sam nodded his head in agreement and turned to watch the scenery fly by outside the window. He could feel the emotions rolling off of Dean, the rage and helplessness, and couldn't help but commiserate. They had suffered so much loss, witnessed so much death, in their lives and to have it thrown back at them like this was just cruel. _Demons sure know how to salt the wounds_.

They made a pass by the Hardelle home first, Dean's hands gripping the steering wheel tightly, his green eyes focused on the three squad cars parked outside. Circling back, Sam pulled out two F.B.I. badges from the box of fake I.D.'s in the glove compartment, and handed one to Dean after his brother had parked the Impala at the corner of a rather deserted looking street.

"You'd think there'd be more people with their noses pressed to the windows in a neighborhood like this," Dean noted as he shut the car door and leaned against the Impala, his hands clasped on the roof as he stared over the top of the car at Sam.

"Maybe they've had their fill of carnage and horror," Sam offered with a shrug. He didn't think for a second that he was right and could see, from the look on Dean's face, that his theory had been disregarded as quickly as he'd offered it.

Dean tapped his fingers on the hood in quick succession and pushed away, Sam falling into step behind him as they crossed the street. Two uniformed officers saw them approaching and hurried to cut them off from entering the crime scene. Dean held up his fake badge for the younger of the two officers to see.

"F.B.I," Dean grunted out. He had flipped the wallet closed and was in the process of sticking it back inside his jacket when the older officer, a man in his late fifties with a tire around his waist and a belt of white hair that circled the base of his skull approached, his hand held out.

"Lemme see that again, son."

Dean obliged, glancing over at Sam with a look that said "_can you believe this guy?_" Sam held out his badge to the older police officer too, who scanned it with narrowed eyes before finally relinquishing them back over to Sam and Dean.

"Nice to meet you, Agents Ford and Hamel." He offered Dean his hand, but Dean merely looked at the older man with icy green eyes. Slowly, the man lowered his hand, glancing at Sam who gave him a sympathetic half smile, and nodded towards the rookie behind him. "Name's Julian Vaughn," he added as Dean turned toward the house. Sam followed his brother's movement in his peripheral, seeing the veil of cold determination set tightly on Dean's face, his jaw clenched as he carefully controlled himself.

Vaughn offered his hand to Sam, who shook it firmly, trying to give the air of professionalism that Dean seemed to be abandoning. 'Nice to meet you too, Officer."

"This is my partner, Craig Henley," Officer Vaughn said, introducing the hesitant blonde man standing behind him, staring intently at his feet. "There's a few crime scene guys still milling around inside collecting evidence, but the man you'll want to see is Captain Tobias Kull," Vaughn stated, waving them up the concrete sidewalk. He followed behind them as they climbed the white steps up onto the porch, ducking under the yellow police tape that crisscrossed the two white pillars flanking the opening.

"How do we know which one he is?" Dean asked, clearly hoping to get rid of the two officers.

"He'll be the one wearing the suit," Vaughn stated, his eyes boring into the side of Dean's head. Sam stepped up, blocking Dean from the man's view, and gave the older man another small smile.

"Thanks. We'll take it from here."

Both officers nodded at Sam and returned to their post at the end of the sidewalk. Sam turned to find that Dean had already disappeared, the front door standing open like a wide mouth screaming silently into the cloudy afternoon. Sam hurried inside, scanning the small entryway before continuing into the house.

As he stepped into the spacious living room, taking in the blood and gore that was splattered around the beige walls and matching carpet, Sam saw Dean in the corner of the room, talking to a crime scene tech.

"…is where the police found Mr. Hardelle, then?" Dean was asking as Sam stepped up beside him. Dean quickly glanced over at his brother before turning back to the tech.

"Yup," the woman replied shortly.

She reached up and tucked a strand of dark brown hair behind her ear, the white latex gloves on her hands giving a stark contrast to her dark, olive complexion. She was a pretty woman, her caramel eyes framed with long, dark eyelashes and a slender figure. Sam returned the nod she gave in acknowledgement of his appearance.

"He was kind of spread all over the place, but mainly they found him slumped against the wall in this corner here." She squatted down and pointed at large blood stain that surrounded a wide hole in the plaster wall. "He was impaled by one of the fire pokers so that he was pretty much propped up looking out into the rest of the house."

"Do you know if he was dead before he was impaled?" Sam asked, feeling his skin crawl at the idea of being run-through while still alive.

The tech merely shrugged her shoulders. "Can't say for sure, but based on lividity, I'd say he was. Not for long though. He'd already lost a lot of blood and the fire poker pretty much obliterated his chest wall." The woman removed a small piece of what looked like skin from the hole in the wall with a pair of tweezers and dropped in into a small glass container, the robotic motion making Sam's stomach churn uncomfortably.

Looking back out over the living room, following what would have been Mr. Hardelle's line of sight, Sam saw there was a thick trail of crimson that led out of the living room, across the hardwood floors that indicated the dining room, and off through another doorway which, he assumed, led to the kitchen.

"What caused that?" Sam asked, indicating the blood trail.

"A little of Mr. Hardelle here, maybe a little of Mrs. Hardelle and their oldest son, but we won't know for sure until the lab tests tell us whose blood is all here." The woman stood up and placed her hands on her hips, surveying the carnage around her with an air of nonchalance Sam found disheartening. "If you guys don't mind, I'd like to get these samples out to the truck?" She nodded down at the tackle box-like case at her feet and glanced up to meet Sam's eyes.

"Yeah, sure," Dean grunted out. He turned and strode away, following the blood trail until he was out of sight.

Sam felt the eyes of the female crime scene analyst on his face, questions burning on the tip of her tongue, but, to Sam's shock, the woman merely shrugged her shoulders, bent down and picked up her box, and walked away, heading out the front door. Sam glanced around the chaotic living room, taking stock of the scattered furniture, and realized that there was something amiss.

In the middle of the disarray sat a single oak chair, obviously borrowed from the dinning room set. Its placement appeared deliberate, set just off the side of the blood trail, but still within eye line of where Jacob Hardelle had been left. Sam stepped closer, his gaze zeroing in on the small drops of what could only be blood on the floor just below the chair's arms. Squatting down, Sam ran his finger underneath the chair arm closest to him, pulling it back to see a thin layer of yellow dust on its tip. Sulfur.

"What the…" he muttered to himself, biting off the curse as he looked up and around the room. From his new vantage point, Sam saw that there were several other pieces of furniture set strangely about the room.

"Found the same shit in the kitchen," a voice stated from behind Sam. He jumped and spun around to see Dean leaning in the doorway into the living room. He nodded toward the sulfur Sam was wiping onto his pant leg as he stood up.

"It's not like we weren't expecting to find evidence of demons," Sam replied, "But this is weird, man. I mean, look around. Does anything seem a little odd to you?"

Sam watched as Dean scanned the room, he eyes lighting on the out of place oak chair, the beige ottoman and the matching beige lounger both covered in burgundy stains. Dean gave a weary sigh and finally moved away from the doorway.

"Furniture looks like it's been set up like a theatre."

"Why the hell would they do that?" Sam mused aloud, moving towards the lounger. The cream colored carpet was bunched around its base, having been pulled free from the wall by an immense force.

"They're demons, Sam. They like to revel in torture and pain, remember?" Dean crouched down beside Sam, pulling out his pocket knife to scrape at something trapped in the cording around the base of the ottoman. "Probably set the family up to watch as dear old dad got stuck like a pig." He squinted at the white dust on the end of the knife, frowning when he failed to identify it.

"What is that?" Sam asked, squatting down beside Dean and eyeing the substance. Dean shrugged, dipped his pinkie into the white powder, and, to Sam's horror, stuck his finger into his mouth. Sam cringed and smacked his brother on the shoulder. "What the hell, Dean?"

"What?"

"Dude, are you completely insane? You have no idea what the hell that is so you _taste_ it?"

"It's salt," Dean stated simply. Sam's eyebrows jumped in shock and he looked back down at Dean's knife, flabbergasted. "Only one thing you use salt for when it comes to demons." Sam followed Dean as he stood and strolled outside, heading for the Impala.

"I know what we use salt for…" Sam said as he dropped into the passenger seat, yanking the door closed just as the Impala's engine roared to life. "But what the hell were _they _doing with it? I mean…," Sam paused, shaking his head as he tried to wrap his brain around the only logical conclusion glaring at them. "I gotta say it again, man. What the _hell_ is going on?"

Dean glanced over at Sam as they sped around another curve, blowing a red light. "Looks like some demons had themselves a good old fashioned torture-interrogation session to me."

"Yeah," Sam said, nodding in agreement, "But why?"

Dean swung the Impala into the motel parking lot and slammed on the brakes, causing the car to skid to a halt directly in front of their motel room. Dean's green eyes were focused on the door to their room, his face shadowed in the darkening interior of the Impala as he finally spoke.

"Guess that's the million dollar question, now ain't it?"

* * *

***Of course, more to come in a few weeks (or sooner depending on my buddies _Muse _and _Inspiration_) so I hope you will check back then. I will post my Musical Playlist at the completion of this story. Thanks to all of you who have kept on reading!***


	4. Chapter 4

_For both **Disclaimer** and **Spoiler Alert**, please see Chapter 1._

This will be it for a while, folks. Frankly, I have gotten very little feedback (well, none to be perfectly honest) which is very disconcerting. I'm going to continue to write the story because I want and need to finish it, but I probably won't be posting anything for a while (if at all). With that said, the action in this chapter has been amped up some and I have chosen to bring back an OC that I created in my first story "The Fool's Trap". While it is not a prerequisite to read that story nor my second "On The Menu" to follow this one, I am immensely proud of those stories and have shared them (with some great feedback! - Thanks to all of you who did!) with y'all for literary digestion. Hopefully you will think about stopping by and checking them out too.

Please review - whether you loved it, hated it, or whatever emotions it evoked... Thanks!

**

* * *

**

**Four**

Dean flipped aimlessly through the twelve channels on the old television set, hoping in vain that he would finally find something to occupy his tired brain. He was propped up with all the annoyingly flat pillows in the motel room, his aching legs stretched out in front of him, frustration making him tap his fingertips along the side of his legs to a rhythm only he could hear. Dean hurt all over, but he knew that the uncomfortable ache in his muscles and bones was from lack of sleep and he pushed the idea of a nap from his mind.

As he made what felt like his ten thousandth pass through the programming, Sam entered the motel room, a gray cup holder in one hand and a white paper bag clenched in his teeth. He removed the bag as he kicked the door closed with the heel of his boot and froze in place, his hazel eyes focused on his brother's pale, tired appearance.

Feeling self conscious, Dean turned off the TV, tossed the remote at his feet and swung his legs over the edge, his eyes briefly fixed on the dirty brown carpet beneath his feet, giving himself a minute to put the walls back up and fix the seemingly permanent look of cold indifference back on his face.

"Hey," Dean grunted, finally looking back up at Sam.

"Hey," Sam replied, moving over to the small table by the brown curtains that hung over the only windows in their room, rather efficiently blocking the bright sunlight shinning outside. "Sorry it took so long, but I apparently got to the diner just as rush hour hit."

Dean nodded his head and got up, moving on slightly stiff legs to the bag of food Sam had bought. Plopping the plastic salad container onto the table, Dean dug out his cheeseburger and fries and moved back to his bed. With one leg crooked under the other, Dean laid the fries beside him and unwrapped his burger.

He could feel Sam's eyes burning into the top of his head, his desire to ask what was wrong warring with his resolve to let things be. Dean sighed and rewrapped his burger, suddenly nauseous.

"Something wrong with the burger?" Sam asked hesitantly, taking a seat in one of the two metal chairs set around the table. Dean heard Sam open the salad container, its plastic pop like a gunshot in the small space, and he looked up, his green eyes meeting Sam's directly.

Dean could see the pleading in his little brother's eyes, could see the yearning for the days when he'd get a crude remark and a sly smile from Dean, reassuring them both that everything was all right. But everything wasn't all right and probably never would be. There had been too many blows, too many betrayals, to just put on a good charade anymore.

It was true that they were still brothers and that Dean would put his life before Sam's, that he would sacrifice everything he had all over again, to keep his baby brother safe and whole, but there was also that small part of Dean that wished he could just cut that part out. True, they both had done things for the sake of the greater good, with the best of intentions, but you know what they say about good intentions.

"…the road to hell…," Dean muttered to himself, dropping his bent leg down again.

Sam frowned at him and raised an eyebrow in question, but instead of explaining himself, Dean merely shook his head and dropped the burger next to the fries, rubbing his slightly greasy fingers on the thighs of his jeans. He sat there for a moment staring at his legs, at the holes in his dark blue jeans, and sighed.

Although they had their issues, there was no doubt in Dean's mind that Sam was with him one hundred percent, straight to the finish line. Whatever that may be.

"So I was thinking," Dean started, watching as Sam slowly ate his way through his salad.

"That's always a dangerous statement."

Dean forced a chuckle at Sam's joke and leaned forward, his elbows on his knees.

"We should go back to the Hardelle house and look around some more without the cops breathing down our necks."

"It's an active crime scene, Dean. There's going to be police there for a while." Sam dropped his plastic fork on top of his leftover salad and closed the lid. "But I agree that we need to get back there and give it a more thorough search."

"We could go stake it out, wait for the shifts to change. Would probably give us a half hour window to fine-tooth the two-story and get out," Dean suggested, feeling the need to be free of the motel room tingling through his body.

"Going a bit stir crazy?" Sam asked, his eyebrow once again quirked up and a small smile tugging at the corners of his lips.

"No, not at all."

Sam's eyebrow climbed higher in disbelief. "Really? Cause usually you moan and groan about stakeouts."

Dean felt his mouth turning up into a familiar grin, his shoulders lifting in a quick shrug. "Yeah, okay. Maybe I am going a little stir crazy, but can you blame me? They don't even have pay channels, Sam!"

Sam snorted with laughter and shook his head. "This town has a pretty decent looking bar though." He saw Dean's eyebrows go up in interest and a sly smile replace the reluctant grin. "It's only a little after four so we could probably spare a few hours hustling pool and poker before heading out."

Dean grinned and got to his feet, snagging his brown leather jacket off the back of the empty chair. "Sammy, you had me at the word "bar"."

**V V V V V V V V V V V V V V V V**

Sam sat watching Dean line up another shot, pointing at the pocket as he prepared to win his fifth game of pool. The poor victim, this time a college guy in a light blue v-neck and pleated khaki pants, had never stood a chance against Sam's shark of a brother. Dean stood up, grinning widely as the shiny black eight-ball rolled into his predetermined pocket.

"Looks like game," Dean stated. He held his pool cue loosely in his right hand, leaning ever so slightly on the cherry wood stick, his hand held out expectantly. The college guy yanked out his wallet, fumbled a few bills from inside and slammed them onto the pool table before stalking away into the small crowd that had developed during the two hours Sam and Dean had been there.

Taking a sip of his beer, Sam shook his head as Dean strolled over to their table. "You could try and look a little less smug, you know."

"Why?" Dean asked, scooping up his bottle of beer and draining it. "I'm good, Sam. He saw me play the two games before and still thought he could beat me. Why is it my problem college boy couldn't play?"

Sam shook his head again and raised a finger to signal the heavy-set biker woman who was their waitress. She nodded her acknowledgement and disappeared back toward the bar.

A few seconds later, she reappeared with two more bottles of beer and a shot of whiskey. Sam plucked a ten from Dean's winnings as his brother stood counting the cash and handed it to the woman, ignoring the indignant glare he got from Dean. She nodded her head in thanks, turned on a spiked heel that looked about to break, and sauntered away in what Sam could only assume was a gait she was trying to use to catch one of the many male patrons surrounding her.

Dean shuddered at her back, grabbed the shot and downed it quickly, wincing ever so slightly at the bitter burn the alcohol caused. "What time you got?" he asked, nodding at Sam's wrist. Sam glanced down and sighed.

"We could stand to kill another hour. Shifts usually run every nine hours and probably started at about five in the morning which means that the next shift change isn't going to be until about ten."

He looked up, expecting to meet Dean's bored gaze. Instead, Sam found that Dean was smiling, his eyes focused on something just over Sam's left shoulder. Without even turning around to see the girl that had caught his brother's eye, Sam groaned.

"Dude, we don't have time for that."

Reluctantly, Dean's eyes left the woman across the bar and focused on Sam. "Yeah, I know. But it never hurts to keep my options open for later."

He rapped his fingers quickly on the tabletop before picking up his beer and turning around to face the pool table he'd previously occupied. There were two blue-collar guys currently playing a game.

Sam and Dean watched in silence as the bar patrons buzzed around them, catching snippets of conversations. They were both relishing in the easy, normal moment, knowing that in a few hours their lives would once again be anything but normal. After a little while, Dean disappeared, heading off to presumably talk to the woman he'd spotted earlier.

Sighing as he looked down at his watch, Sam slid off his bar stool and turned, nodding at Dean once he'd caught his brother's eye to let him know it was time to leave. They met outside at the Impala, Dean sliding in behind the wheel.

They arrived at the Hardelle house at exactly ten o'clock, rounding the corner at one end of the street just as a police cruiser disappeared around the other. Dean slowly pulled the rumbling Impala up in front of the white two-story and shut the car off. Both brothers scanned the area, taking in the empty windows of the surrounding houses as well as the exterior of the Hardelle house.

"Let's get this over with," Dean grumbled. He opened his door, the metal creak echoed a second later by Sam's, as they climbed from the Impala, and both men circled to the trunk and the cache of weapons hidden beneath the false bottom.

Loaded with rock salt rounds and holy water, Sam and Dean moved in silent unison up the walkway and onto the porch, hunched over as they tried to avoid attracting attention. Dean crouched low and began to pick the lock to the front door, hearing the satisfying click of the tumbler a few seconds later.

"Yahtzee," he muttered under his breath as the door creaked open. He stood up and, using the military hand signals John had taught them to communicate with each other, they entered the house.

Nodding at Dean, Sam cut to the left, entering the dining room and disappearing through the white swinging door into the kitchen. Dean turned right, reentering the living room, switching on a small penlight and using its narrow beam to scan the scattered room.

The furniture had been shifted ever so slightly, most likely from the crime scene techs and police officers as they tried to collect their useless evidence Dean thought bitterly. He had only taken a few steps into the room when he heard a low creak come from above his head.

"Sam?" he hissed out, turning towards the sound of his brother's footsteps. Sam appeared in the dining room, nodding his head when Dean pointed to the ceiling above. "I think we've got visitors."

"Cops?" Sam asked hopefully, his hazel eyes bouncing from the white ceiling to the stairwell off to his left.

"Doubt it."

With a sigh, Sam followed Dean to the stairs, each of them taking a side with Dean against the wall and Sam temporarily exposed against the banister. Slowly they began to ascend, their guns drawn and their breath held. As they reached the first landing, Dean signaled that he was going left while Sam should go right.

"You think splitting up's a good idea?" Sam asked, his voice coming out in a low hiss.

"Probably not, but we'll cover more ground," Dean replied, his jaw tight and his green eyes focused. Sam nodded and started down the hallway, his .45 held tightly in his right hand, his penlight in his left. He'd cleared every room on his side of the hallway, finding each one empty and disheveled, when he heard the crash.

It came, not from Dean's end of the hallway, but from below. Racing from the room, Sam met Dean at the top of the stairs. "Please tell me that was you," Dean stated as they stopped at the top of the stairs.

"Sounded like it came from the kitchen."

"What the hell?" Dean growled out. He started down the stairs, Sam close on his heels, both of them with their guns held readily in front of them.

As they rounded the corner into the dining room, there was a second crash, this one from behind. Sam and Dean spun around to see two figures tumbling around the room, entangled in each other, grunts and curses echoing around them. When they spotted Sam and Dean, they paused in their pseudo-dance long enough for the taller man's eyes to flicker jet black.

"Filthy hunters," the demon hissed, shoving the brown haired young man in his arms straight at Sam. Sam stumbled backwards from the impact, the two men tumbling into the wall behind Sam, giving Dean a clear shot. He took it, knowing that the bullets in his gun would do little more than piss the demon off further but knowing he needed it to be temporarily distracted.

The demon paused in mid-stride to look down at where the four bullets had found their mark, taking the bait. "C'mon, Dean. I know you can do better than that," he growled, the man whose body the demon was wearing smiling at them maniacally.

As it began to laugh, Dean pulled the demon killing knife from an inside pocket of his jacket and ran at the demon. It let loose a primal scream a second before Dean buried the knife into its chest.

There was a flash of light beneath the skin as the demon was snuffed out of existence followed by the weightless shift of the now deceased man. Dean stepped back, yanking the knife out and turned towards Sam and the other young man, letting the dead body thud to the floor.

"Get…off," Sam grunted, shoving the man away with some effort. Dean raised the knife as the man stumbled towards him and the man threw up his hands, palms out in caution.

"Easy, dude. I'm not a demon," the man stated, his sharp blue eyes bouncing from the knife to Dean's face then to Sam who had circled around to flank Dean.

"And we're going to believe that simply on good faith?" Dean ground out, his fingers reflexively curling around the hilt of the knife.

"I'll prove it," the man replied, producing a plastic water bottle. "Holy water, okay," he explained, showing the bottle to both Sam and Dean before unscrewing the top and chugging most of the contents. "See? No screaming in agony, no smoke or steam…"

"No offense, buddy, but that could be Evian for all we know," Sam stated, pulling Samuel Colt's specialized gun from behind his back. Having only recently reacquired the weapon, the memory of that night gave the gun a heavier weight in Sam's hands. He curled his fingers around the grip, and pulled back the hammer.

"Okay…so what do you want me to do?" the man growled out, frustration and anger making him curl his empty hand into a fist.

Dean pulled out a small silver flask and tossed it over to him. "Drink out of that," he instructed when the guy caught the flask. The man arched an eyebrow at him in question, blue eyes sparking with curiosity.

"Relax. It's more holy water."

"Whatever floats your boat…" he mumbled as he unscrewed the lid and tipped the flask against his lips. Sam and Dean stood watching, waiting. When nothing happened, both Sam and Dean relaxed slightly.

"Happy now?" the man asked as he screwed the lid back on and tossed the flask back to Dean.

"No, but frankly that has nothing to do with you," Dean barked back, sheathing the knife and sliding back into a side pocket. "Who the hell are you, anyway?"

"A hunter, just like you."

"_That_ I gathered," Dean snapped, pointing down at the deceased man at his feet. "What's you _name_, Sherlock."

"Peyton Jessup, but most people call me P.J." He offered his hand to Dean, who merely stared at P.J, his green eyes filled with ice. "You're really Sam and Dean Winchester?"

"Yeah," Sam answered quickly when he saw the muscle in the side of Dean's jaw jump. "Nice to meet you, P.J." Sam tucked the Colt behind his back in the waistband of his jeans and shook the hunter's outstretched hand.

"No offense, but what the hell are you two doing here?"

Reaching up, Peyton ran his hands through his dark brown hair, pulling it out of his eyes for a moment before gravity took control and dropped it back onto his forehead. His deep blue eyes sparkled with something Sam couldn't quite put his finger on, something that made him feel slightly uneasy. He was dressed in dark blue jeans and a dark grey and blue button-up over a black t-shirt, almost an exact replica of Dean's outfit.

"Following the same trail, I'm guessing," Sam replied.

Just as he opened his mouth to ask P.J whether he knew what was going on there was a rumble through the house, almost as if an earthquake had hit. All three hunters stumbled, trying to gain their feet on suddenly uneven ground.

"What the hell was that?" Dean ground out, his hand jerking out to grasp the top of the lounger in a desperate attempt to right the tilting world. Before anyone could answer in speculation, there was a crash from the direction of the kitchen followed by another boom of sound.

P.J, Sam, and Dean moved on unsteady legs towards the hallway, heading for the kitchen, when two figures appeared in front of them. One was a woman with pale blonde hair dressed in tight black leather pants and an even tighter fuchsia top. The other was a man who appeared to be in his late sixties, his silver and black hair in sharp contrast to his white dress shirt and black slacks. Both had onyx eyes and wicked grins on their faces.

"Hello, boys," the woman cooed, her voice too high pitched and childlike for it to be the purr she was going for. "Fancy meeting you here."

Dean felt himself growl in disgust, the sound reverberating in his chest as it built and climbed up his throat. He reached inside his jacket for his knife and saw Sam pulling out the Colt in his peripheral.

Armed with the best weapons to destroy the two demons before them, Sam and Dean took a confident step forward only to be cut off by P.J. Cockiness oozed off of the smaller man, his slight, but muscular frame flexing as he moved.

"Been waiting for you assholes to show up," P.J stated, his voice low and deadly. "Didn't take me long to get rid of your pal." He jerked his head towards the living room. The woman's black eyes jumped to the legs on the floor just visible around the frame of the doorway before returning them to the hunters.

"You talk a big game, hunter," the male demon chuckled out. "But we've got numbers on our side. Numbers you can't even imagine."

"Sounds to me like you're the one doing all the talking," Dean cut in, brandishing the knife so that the demons could see it for what it was: a sure death sentence. The ripple of uncertainty that flickered across the two demons' faces was unmistakable and brought up a feeling of amusement in Dean.

"In the end, we'll rule the Earth, Dean. It's just a matter of time," the woman said, her tiny hands curling into fists at her sides.

There was a scuffing noise from behind them and Dean turned his head to see that two more demons had appeared in the living room, both dressed in matching green coveralls, their long, jet black hair pulled into ponytails at the base of their necks.

"See? Like I said, it's all about the numbers," the crisply-dressed demon said.

The room exploded in a flurry of activity as P.J launched himself at the crisply dressed demon, flinging holy water and salt so that the man screamed in pain. Sam spun to attack one of the men in green coveralls as Dean threw himself at the other.

Sam had just managed to bring the Colt up when the demon slammed into him like a linebacker on a football field. The gun went off into it's belly, the sound muffled by the man's weight and his clothing, and the demon flashed out of existence. Sam turned to see Dean yanking the knife out of the second man's jaw, the demon inside just as dead as the man falling at his brother's feet.

For one brief second, Sam wished that he was still using his powers, knowing that they could have saved the people being murdered at the same time they were killing the demons. Dean saw this flash of thought travel across Sam's face, recognizing the conflict in his little brother's hazel eyes, and felt a twinge of anger and disgust towards Sam before he forced it away and moved to help Peyton.

P.J. seemed to be having no problems dealing with the older man. He had backed it into a devil's trap neither brother had noticed upon entry and was exorcising it quickly using the Ritual Romanum. They all had lost track of the blonde though and Dean and Sam quickly went on the alert, their eyes scanning the area around them.

As Sam and Dean started for the kitchen, the swinging door burst open and the blonde came stumbling through it, wedging the door open with her falling body, a silver blade stuck in her chest. Steam seeped from the wound around the hilt of the knife as the blonde demon shrieked and thrashed around on the floor.

Frozen in the action, Sam and Dean merely stood there staring at the figure in the kitchen battling two demons, one of whom looked like he was taken straight from the field of a baseball game and the other a Bon Jovi music video reject. With a spinning kick, the Bon Jovi reject went careening out of view, slamming into what sounded like a shelf of pots and pans, the clatter of metal on tile thunderous in the small space.

The figure was a woman clad in snug blue jeans, a dark green turtleneck sweater, and black boots, her reddish-brown hair quickly falling out of the loose ponytail. She turned, catching Sam and Dean staring in recognition, and tossed holy water into the face of the slugger, causing the demon to shriek and paw at his face.

"Think maybe I could get a little help here?"

* * *

***As previously stated, I will post my Musical Playlist at the completion of this story.***


	5. Chapter 5

_For both **Disclaimer** and **Spoiler Alert**, please see Chapter 1._

Okay, so it's been awhile and I have been stewing with the creative juices. I've gotten a fair amount of work done on this story and figured I would maybe drop a chapter here just to keep things alive a little. I hope y'all out there enjoy this.

With that said, the action in this chapter has been amped up some and I have chosen to bring back an OC that I created in my first story "The Fool's Trap". While it is not a prerequisite to read that story nor my second "On The Menu" to follow this one, I am immensely proud of those stories and have shared them (with some great feedback! - Thanks to all of you who did!) with y'all for literary digestion. Hopefully you will think about stopping by and checking them out too.

Please review - whether you loved it, hated it, or whatever emotions it evoked... Thanks!

* * *

**Five**

Dean was the first one broken from the spell of inactivity. He charged into the kitchen, sacking the demon fighting with the young woman like a linebacker on a football field. The momentum kept them moving, allowing Dean to use it to slam the demon into the dark, marble kitchen counter and disorienting it for a moment.

That moment was what Dean had been hoping for as he plunged the knife deep into the man's chest, creating his own dot over the "I" of the embroidered team name. There was a flash as the demon was snuffed out. As Dean turned around to locate the Bon Jovi reject, he heard the report of the Colt as Sam shot the blonde demon still screaming in the doorway.

P.J. had joined the melee, his bright blue eyes focused on the woman as she jammed a sawed-off shotgun into the gut of the last demon standing, the bang muffled by the layers of denim and cotton he was wearing. The demon stumbled backwards clutching its stomach before straightening up, a wicked smile stretched across the man's lips.

"That all you got, hunter?"

"Actually, no," the woman replied smugly, reaching down. She flipped back the corner of a large area rug to reveal a devil's trap spray painted onto the white tile floor.

She had begun to recite an exorcism ritual when the demon spoke again, its voice filled with pain as the spell squeezed it from its host.

"Wait! I can give you the information you're searching for," it gasped out.

"What the hell are you talking about?" Reggie snapped, her eyebrows drawing together in a confused frown.

"The book, I know where it is."

"Book? What book?" Dean asked, his voice a deep rumble in the suddenly quiet kitchen. Dean turned to the young woman standing to his right, her mouth hanging slightly agape in obvious shock. "Reggie?" Dean barked, trying to get the female hunter's attention.

Slowly, Reggie's emerald eyes, the piercing green eyes that had populated many of Dean's dreams since the last time he and Sam had seen the woman, shifted upward. She met Dean's gaze for a moment, some kind of emotion flashing across her face. Then, as if realizing that her mouth was hanging open, Reggie closed it, her jaw shutting with an audible snap.

"The Key of Solomon," Reggie finally answered, her voice a whisper of what it was just a few minutes ago.

"You're joking, right?" Sam scoffed. "You can see a copy of that book online at about a thousand different websites."

"Those are knockoffs. Simply watered down copies," the demon replied snidely. "The one she's looking for is the original. Written in Solomon's own hand. Covered in his blood, sweat, and tears."

"Reggie, you can't be seriously buying this crap?" Sam turned to the female hunter with an incredulous look on his face.

"I don't know, Sam," Reggie muttered, her eyes focused on the demon trapped before her. "There have been whispers for weeks now. Rumors of demons searching for something. That's what was going on in here the other night." She turned, looking at Sam directly, and shrugged. "It might be a load of bull but there was something these demons were looking for that required the torture and murder of three innocent people, Sam. Something they were willing to torture out of a comrade."

"Not that they really mind inflicting pain and suffering on any living breathing thing, but demons don't usually torment their own. They all tend to play on the same team," PJ added.

"Shows you what you know, kid," Dean growled out. "Not everyone is on Team Lucifer."

"Regardless," Reggie said, cutting in just as PJ took a step towards Dean, his mouth opening in reply. "There is one flaw in your little charade, Jon," she hissed out, turning back to the demon.

"Yeah? What?"

"The Key of Solomon isn't one book. It's two. One contains conjurations and the other purifications." Reggie stood, her hands on her hips, her eyes a vibrant green in their anger.

"And you want me to spill as to which one we were looking for?" the demon chuckled out. He shook his head slowly from side to side. "Fat chance sweetheart. I ain't telling you that." He pursed his lips and blew Reggie a kiss then opened his mouth and screamed.

A black cloud exploded out of the man's throat, swirling above the hunters for a second before exploding through the kitchen doorway and out of sight.

"Dammit!" Dean yelled, slamming his hand into the door of the cabinet beside him.

"Relax, man," PJ drawled out, shaking his head. "There are plenty more demons to terminate."

Dean spun on the young man, his face flushing a pale red, and took a menacing step forward before Reggie stopped him, her hand on his chest. For a second, Dean and Reggie stared at each other, frozen in place, a silent conversation passing between them. The exchange stirred something in Sam, seeing his brother communicate so easily with someone other than family. The moment passed and Reggie dropped her hand, spinning to glare at PJ.

"Go get in the Plymouth, PJ. We'll clean up and meet you there in ten." PJ opened his mouth, an argument clearly on the tip of his tongue when suddenly the ground beneath their feet shook violently. The tile floor cracked and smoke and water began to spew from the newly formed hole.

"What the hell…" Sam shouted above the rumbling and hissing.

"Dammit!" Reggie yelled. She threw her arm out, trying to steady herself with the kitchen counter and instead found herself being held upright by Dean. "Thanks."

"No problem."

"Think maybe we should, I don't know…get the hell out of here?" Sam shouted as another quake shook the modest two story house.

"We can't," Reggie replied, yelling to be heard over the cacophony of sound. "We need to find the book."

"I don't think we're going to be finding anything buried under rubble, Reggie," Dean cried, pulling her with him as he made his way towards the doorway into the dining room.

Reggie yanked her hand out of his grasp and started back into the kitchen. "It's here. It has to be."

"Reggie!" Dean yelled after her. He watched her disappear through an doorway on the other side of the kitchen, his hand on the doorjamb as he braced himself against another quake.

"I got her." Sam darted past Dean, heading through the same doorway, vanishing out of sight.

PJ and Dean stood in the doorway, protected by the doorjamb as sections of the plaster ceiling began to fall away. They'd been waiting only a few seconds when the world around them exploded. Bits of tile floor and flames shot into the air as the basement below erupted in a fiery blast.

"Sam!" Dean screamed, the air around him a sudden oven. He drew in another breath to yell again when his lungs seized up and he began to choke on the flaming atmosphere.

There was a crash, as if something heavy had been dropped from the sky. Dean looked up and watched as a large section of the kitchen floor dropped away, revealing a chasm of fire beneath.

Dean lurched forward, his eyes and lungs burning, his only thoughts on his brother and friend. His brain buzzed with a steady stream of, "no, no, no," his heart banging in his chest to the beat. PJ reached out, trying to stop him and Dean spun, his fist raised, ready to strike the young man when, out of the corner of his eye, he saw movement.

Reggie, with Sam's arm slung over her shoulder and his head lolling from side to side, stumbled into the kitchen, catching herself on the counter in order to stop their moment from carrying them into the newly formed hole in the floor. She was heaving and coughing, Sam's dead wait clearly taxing for her slight frame.

"Is he…?" Dean managed to get out before launching into another coughing fit as more ash and smoke filled his lungs.

"Unconscious. A beam fell on him as the floor gave out," Reggie coughed out, answering Dean's unfinished question. "Idiot was trying to be a hero."

"Saved…your…ass," Sam choked out weakly. He shook his head, trying to clear the hazy fog , and grinned at Reggie.

"Smartass…" Reggie grumbled, the corner of her mouth twitching with a reluctant smile. "We gotta get out of here, Sam. Do you think you can walk on your own?"

Sam nodded and planted his feet on the crumbling floor. He took two uneasy steps before the ground began to tilt towards him and he felt a steady arm wrap around his waist. He turned towards the warmth and saw Reggie there, a grimaced determination on her face.

"Maybe not."

"You've gotta move, guys," PJ stated anxiously, eyeing the increasingly growing hole. "That floor ain't gonna hold for too much longer." Everyone turned to glare at him.

"You think?" Dean snapped irritated.

"I'm going to move us along the wall. That part of the floor seems to be stronger," Reggie said. She shifted Sam's arm across her shoulders, grasping his wrist tightly in her left hand. Slipping the fingers of her right hand into the belt loop of Sam's jeans, Reggie began to move around the widening hole towards Dean and PJ.

The journey seemed like an eternity. When they were within reach, Dean wrapped his arm around Sam's waist and lifted some of his weight off Reggie's shoulders. Together, Reggie and Dean moved Sam in a hurried, awkward walk through the dining room and out the front door, PJ close on their heels.

The group didn't stop as they reached the sidewalk, but kept moving, ignoring the horrendous crashes behind them as the fire began to consume the rest of the house, causing it to implode on itself as flames burned through the support beams.

The Impala was the first car they arrived at, a somewhat safe distance from the Hardelle house. That's where they all finally turned to look at the carnage. Reggie gasped in horror as part of the porch shifted, the roof crumbling out over the front lawn.

"That was too freakin' close," Dean stated, breaking into everyone's reverie.

"We have to get out of here," Reggie said. "The cops and the fire company will be here any moment." She relinquished Sam's arm and he slumped against the comforting support of the black steel of the Impala. "My car is parked just around the block. I'll circle around and you two can follow me." Dean and Sam nodded at her, then watched as she trotted off down the darkened road, PJ following after her at a slow jog.

Dean hustled around the front of the Impala as Sam began the arduous task of opening the Impala's door and lowering himself into the passenger seat. With Dean behind the wheel, the Impala's engine rumbling beneath them, Sam and Dean waited.

A second later, Reggie's dark blue Plymouth Fury Sport whipped around the far corner. She sped by them, barely slowing, and headed back the way Sam and Dean had arrived only a half hour before. Dean pulled out and followed after Reggie. They could just begin to hear the faint sound of sirens as the inferno of the Hardelle home began to shrink in the rearview mirror.

**V V V V V V V V V V V V V V**

Dean turned the Impala onto the highway, keeping a close tail on Reggie's Plymouth, his hands gripping the steering wheel. Thoughts buzzed like angry bees inside his head. A steady rain had begun to fall, forcing Dean to turn on the windshield wipers. The blades swished back and forth across the windshield, creating the only noise in the eerily silent car.

"What the hell is going on here?" Dean snapped, his voice an angry growl. He could feel Sam's eyes on his face, could feel them burning with questions Dean wasn't sure he wanted to hear.

"Dean…" Sam hesitantly tried to get his brother's attention. "Maybe you could slow down a bit, man."

"Don't backseat drive, Sam."

"It's just…" Sam sighed and dropped his head into his hands, his thumbs rubbing at his temples.

"How's the head?" Dean asked. Sam looked up and winced as a passing car's headlights flashed through the interior of the car. "I always thought it was made of stone. Guess I was wrong, huh?"

Sam chuckled and tilted his head back, resting it against the top of the seat. "It's hard, but not that hard." He opened his eyes and rolled his head so that he could peer at Dean. "Besides, I'm not the only one with an iron skull."

Dean glanced over at Sam, a ghost of a smile on his lips and shook his head. "Touché." Dean's gaze returned to the road ahead of them, the smile dropping from his face. "We can't do this," Dean muttered, shaking his head at the thoughts running through his mind.

"Can't do what?"

"This, Sam!" Dean snapped, pointing at the Plymouth's taillights. "Getting involved in this _situation_ with Reggie. We can't do it, Sam. _I _can't do it!"

Dean slammed on the brakes, skidding the Impala to the side of the road so suddenly that Sam had to throw out his hands in front of him to keep from flying into the dashboard.

"Man, I know," Sam began, pushing himself back against the seat and trying to ignore the lump in his chest that was currently his pounding heart. "It'll be o…"

"Don't!" Dean snapped, spinning to look at his little brother, his face a mask of pain and rage. The sight almost broke Sam's speeding heart. "Don't tell me that this is in any way going _to be okay_. Nothing is ever okay for us, Sam!"

"I get it, Dean, I do. What happened with Jo and Ellen…it was rough. Still is. But this is a job, Dean. We came here because what happened to the Hardelle's, whatever did that to that poor family, needs to be stopped, man."

Sam took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. He could feel the emotions rolling off of Dean. He watched as Dean closed his eyes and leaned forward, his head lowering until his forehead rested on the steering wheel.

"We can't keep losing people. _I_ can't…" Dean shook his head and tapped his forehead against the steering wheel. "Not again, Sammy," Dean groaned, his voice barely above a whisper. "Not…"

Sam reached out and laid his hand on his brother's shoulder, Dean's unspoken words forming a lump in his throat. "We won't," he finally managed to get out. Clearing his throat, Sam forced himself back into his seat and turned to look out the windshield. "I promise, Dean. Not this time."

Sam watched as the Plymouth headed down the road, Reggie's headlights speeding towards them. The car screeched to a stop and the driver's side door flew open as Reggie jumped out and raced to the Impala. Sam cranked down the window just as she reached the passenger door.

"What's going on?" she yelled over the pounding rain and passing traffic. "Are you guys okay?"

"Yeah, we're okay," Sam answered, glancing over to see Dean sitting upright, the mask of indifference back in place. "Dean thought the Impala's engine was making an unusual noise."

Reggie stared at Sam, disbelief evident on her face. But instead of calling him on his bluff, she simply nodded her head and remained quiet. Ignoring the soaking rain that was plastering her reddish brown hair to her face, Reggie rested her hands on the windowsill and leaned into the Impala.

"We're only about ten minutes from home base. You think she'll be able to make it that far?"

"That should be okay," Dean replied, finally turning to look at Reggie. She nodded her head in acknowledgement, rapt her hands on the Impala's roof, and jogged back to the Plymouth.

Sam and Dean watched Reggie climb back behind the wheel of her car and pull back out onto the road, neither of them desiring to carry on their previous conversation. Sam reached up and ran his hand through his shaggy brown hair, feeling gently along his skull until he found the bump on his head.

"Have you realized how much the two of you are alike?" Sam asked, wincing as he gingerly pressed the goose egg on the top of his head. Dean sped down the road, at a more respectable speed, the windshield wipers swiping at a slower rhythm as the rain began to let up.

"Who?" Dean grunted out.

"You and Reggie, man. The way she eats, the way she barrels into danger over the most idiotic reasons." Sam took a second to hiss as he continued to probe his skull. "The way she talks sometimes."

"What are you talking about?" Dean flicked his turn signal on, something Sam had only ever seen him do on a handful of occasions and almost always when his brother's thoughts were somewhere else, as they turned off the highway, following Reggie onto a rather deserted main road.

"Reggie called the Impala "she", man. How many girls have you met who do that? Hell, how many have you met that could probably dismantle and reassemble the engine without batting an eye?"

"Careful, Sam. You're getting sacrilegious," Dean growled playfully. He reached out and stroked the dashboard comfortingly. "I'd never let anyone don't that to you, baby," he cooed under his breath to the car. Sam snorted and shook his head.

"I'm just saying…"

"No, I know what you're saying. Reggie and I… We're kind of…" Dean paused, struggling to find the right words.

"Kindred spirits?" Sam offered. Dean glanced at Sam, seeing the a separate set of words that jumped to mind reflected in those hazel eyes, and nodded his head.

"Yeah."

Sam sighed as he turned to look out the windshield, watching as Reggie turned onto a side street and pull up in front of a small, brick building, set at the end of a group of otherwise concrete and stone facades. A wide green and silver sign swung in the wind.

"Coogan's?" he asked, his eyebrows arching upward in confusion.

Sam and Dean watched Reggie climb out of the Plymouth before, with a shrug, Dean turned off the Impala's engine and opened his door. They climbed from the car and met up with Reggie on the sidewalk in front of Coogan's.

"A bar?" Dean asked, his voice conveying his bewilderment. "This is you home base?"

* * *

***As previously stated, I will post my Musical Playlist at the completion of this story.***


	6. Chapter 6

_For both **Disclaimer** and **Spoiler Alert**, please see Chapter 1._

So...it is what it is. Please Review.

**

* * *

**

**Six**

"It's a tavern, not a bar. And believe me, it's more than it looks," Reggie stated, sliding her hands into the front pockets of her blue jeans. She began to rock back onto her heels. The motion made Sam smile. It reminded him of a much younger Dean, his brother bouncing with anxious energy as he awaited orders from John.

Reggie caught Sam watching her and smiled at him. Sam felt his lips turn up in response. PJ hovered in the background, attracting way too much of Dean's attention. Dean stood glaring at the young man, his green eyes taking in PJ's nervous energy.

Reggie seemed to notice this too. She pulled her hands from her pockets, a set of keys dangling from the index finger of her right hand.

"'C'mon. Let's get inside before it starts to pour again."

She led them around the side of the building to the entrance; a heavy mahogany door with a four-leaf clover shaped window cut into it exactly at Sam's eye level. After unlocking the two heavy duty locks, Reggie held the door open and stepped back, allowing PJ to lead the way inside. Sam followed next, Dean at his back as Reggie pulled up the rear, bolting the door behind them.

Coogan's, by all appearances, was just like any other tavern; a large, L-shaped bar took up most of the wall opposite the entrance, mirrored shelves lined with a myriad of liquor bottles and drinking glasses behind that. To the right were an ancient jukebox and a set of pool tables. To the left were about a dozen tables, four chairs turned upside down on each tabletop.

The interior was done in earth tones with an Irish flair; dark wood and shades of green being the most common theme. Two flags, one Ireland's national flag and the other with what Sam assumed was the owner's family crest, hung in each corner of the wall facing the street and below them were six shuttered windows.

A set of dark oak doors to the left of the bar led off to what had to be the tavern's small kitchen and a long hallway to the right led to what Sam assumed were the bathrooms.

Coogan's smelled just like any other bar, too. Stale cigarettes and booze mixed with the scent of sweat and fried food. To Sam, it smelled like a life long forgotten. Days spent on the road when his only focus was finding John and the thing that had killed Jess and their mother. It made him antsy and claustrophobic.

Sam's stomach clenched uncomfortably. He glanced behind at the door leading to freedom and fresh air, suddenly feeling trapped like a rat in a cage.

To Dean, it smelled like heaven. The scents mingled together to create the perfect bouquet. It instantly worked to relax Dean, the muscles in his tense shoulders cradling him like a lover's embrace. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath through his nose, relishing the smell of familiarity as it enveloped him. To Dean, this generic bar with its heavy aromas felt like safety.

At least, until he heard the distinct click of a hammer on a gun.

Dean's eyes flew open and he found himself staring down the twin-barrels of a 1879 Colt Kodiak.

"Quinn!" Reggie shouted, pushing past Dean and putting herself directly in front of the gun. Sam saw Dean flinch, his hands balling into fists at his sides as Reggie was placed in direct danger. "Put the gun down. Now!"

Reggie's shoulders were squared, but there was the slightest tremble to them. Anyone who didn't know the woman may have mistaken it as fear, but Sam recognized it for what it was. Rage. Although he couldn't see her face as she stood in a protective stance, her slender frame doing little to block Dean from harm, Sam knew that her cheeks had flushed a deep red with anger.

The man in front of them held his ground, but there was a perceptible shift in the aim of the gun. It was tilted ever so slightly downward, the barrels angling a little towards the floor. He was tall, almost as tall as Sam, and just as solid and broad as Dean. He had black hair that was cropped in a short military style similar to John's.

His deep blue eyes were set behind long, dark eyelashes. They jumped from Sam to Dean, ignoring Reggie's angry gaze.

"I said drop the gun, Quinn!" Reggie growled, taking a step towards the man and putting the gun directly against her chest. Sam reached out and grabbed Dean's shoulder just as his brother took a step forward.

"Why'd you bring them here?" Quinn ground out, his voice a deep rumble.

"Because they saved mine and PJ's asses," Reggie snapped. "And because they're friends."

"Do you have any idea what they're responsible for?"

"I trust them, Quinn. And, last time I checked, you don't get to say who can come and go here."

"People die, Reggie," Quinn hissed out, leaning towards her as he shifted the gun. "Wherever those two…"

The rest of Quinn's sentence was expelled out in a whoosh of breath as Reggie punched him in the solar plexus with her right hand and swept the barrel of the gun up and away with her left. She continued in a fluid movement, grabbing the hilt of the gun, yanking it from Quinn's grasp and twisting it around.

Reggie stood with her feet planted, the gun aimed at Quinn's panting face. "I gave you fair warning," she ground out. "Who else wants to point a gun at us?" she called out, glancing around the room.

Several people had appeared in the bar, all of them armed. A woman with flaming red hair and ivory skin stood in the doorway to the kitchen, a tall man that could be her twin behind her. Both held crossbows.

From the hallway, a teenage girl with light brown hair pulled into a ponytail and a gangly boy stepped forward, both holding sawed-off shotguns. Behind them stood a tall, light skinned African American woman, her dark brown eyes as sharp as the bowie knife in her hand.

Sam knew they were outnumbered, but was dissuaded from pulling his own weapon out by the fact that no one seemed to be advancing on them.

"I think maybe we…" Dean began, raising his hands into the air in a non-threatening manner.

"I think everyone needs to put down their weapons and take a deep breath," a deep voice stated from behind them. Sam spun to find himself face to face with the first man to tower over him in a very long time.

He had silver hair that seemed to glow in a halo around his head and deep brown eyes that had warmth beneath the authority Sam immediately associated with his father. The man gave him a small smile and tilted his head at him before stepping past him. The man stopped beside Reggie and placed his hand on the barrel of the gun in her hand.

"Why?" Quinn asked, glaring at Dean as he straightened up, massaging the spot where Reggie'd hit him. "They're the Winchesters, Dag. You know what they've done. What they're supposed to…" He raised a Glock, having pulled the gun from somewhere hidden, and pointed it at Dean.

Sam had been so distracted by the older man's appearance that he hadn't noticed the man had armed himself again. Sam reached his hand into an inside jacket pocket and loosely gripped the hilt of his own gun.

"If you want them, you're going to have to go through me," Reggie spat, taking a menacing step forward.

"Reggie," both Dean and the man named Dag said, Dean's voice a shocked growl and Dag's a sort of fatherly scold.

She glanced over her shoulder, her green eyes flicked to Dag's face before settling on Dean's. There was a moment of complete silence, where it felt like all the air in the room had been sucked out and everyone inside frozen into ice. Then Reggie blinked, nodded her head once, and relaxed out of her fighting stance, letting the gun drop to her side.

"These men are friends of Reggie's and for that, we'll offer them hospitality just as we would any other hunters," Dag stated, his deep voice booming through the bar. It was a commanding voice that broke the spell over everyone.

There was a burst of activity, the red haired couple disappearing back into the kitchen as the woman ushered the two teenagers down the hallway. Leaving Sam and Dean alone with Dag, PJ, Reggie, and Quinn.

"This is bull…" Quinn grumbled, flicking the safety on and slipping the gun behind his back into the waistband of his jeans.

"Hey. Look, pal," Dean snapped, stepping around Reggie. He shook off her hand as she tried to grab his arm. "I don't know what your problem is, but if you ever, and I mean_ ever_, point a gun at me, my brother, or her again, I swear to all that is holy I will…"

"Dean!" Dag barked.

Dean turned his head towards the older man, his eyes alight with an immense fury Sam knew was not only directed at the young man in front of him. The two men stared at each other for a moment before tipped his head in submission.

"Quinn, why don't you head up and relieve Hollis from night watch. Take the next shift," Dag instructed.

Sam watched as the man opened his mouth to argue before rethinking. Quinn turned on his heel and strode across the room, casting one fleeting look over his shoulder before disappearing down the hallway. Sam began to think of it as "the hallway to nothingness."

Dag then turned towards Sam and extended his hand. "The name's Henry Dagwood."

Dean's jaw dropped open, mirroring Sam's identical shocked expression.

"I'm guessing you've heard my name before," Dag said with a soft chuckle.

"You were in the Corp with our dad," Dean stated. Dag nodded his head and smiled at Dean.

"Your father was a good kid. I was sorry to hear of both his induction into this life and his passing."

The older man bowed his head briefly then lifted his eyes to meet Sam's gaze.

"I'm sure you boys are gonna want to talk a bit, but perhaps it can wait? I have some business to attend to and, no offense, but you all look ready to fall over with exhaustion."

Dag turned to PJ, who had been hovering silently in the background throughout the whole standoff. "How about you take Sam upstairs and show him a room he and his brother can use?"

"Sure. No problem, Dag," PJ obediently replied. He nodded at Sam and started for "the hallway to nothingness." Sam and Dean exchanged a quick look that told Sam they were safe, for now, before Sam left the room, following PJ.

"Reggie, I'll see you tomorrow afternoon," Dag stated, nodding once at the young woman. He turned and exited the bar back out into the black night.

Dean turned to find Reggie striding across the room. She ducked under the wooden bar top and grabbed two highball glasses off a shelf. Dean stood in the middle of the room watching her as she began searching the bottles of liquor, her finger trailing along the edge of one shelf.

"What the hell…" Dean started to say as Reggie selected a bottle and finally turned around to face him. Dean stepped towards the bar, his hands jammed into the pockets of his brown leather jacket.

"I know about the Apocalypse," she blurted out.

Dean felt his jaw hanging open, all the breath sucked from his lungs. Reggie blushed, her pale peach complexion going rosy.

"I know about Sam and the demon blood. I know about him and the last seal to free Lucifer. And I know about what that means for both of you."

Dean's jaw closed with an audible snap. He clenched his teeth, biting back the automatic retorts he'd become accustom to using so callously. "You don't know the half of it," he said instead.

Reggie poured liquor into each glass and slid one of them across the top of the bar to Dean. "Then how about you tell me?"

**V V V V V V V V V V V V V V**

Dean sat on a stool, his shoulders hunched forward as he leaned on the wooden bar. He lazily ran his finger around the mouth of the scotch glass, staring into the amber booze within. Reggie was perched on the stool beside him, sitting in an awkward Indian-style with one hand on her own glass.

"So now you have angelic symbols etched into your ribcage and Castiel's forced to ring you up in order to get in touch with you?"

"Yup, pretty much." Dean raised his glass and knocked back the remaining scotch, relishing the soft burn as it rolled down his throat.

"Bet he just loves that," Reggie muttered. She downed the rest of her glass then refilled them. Dean glanced over at her, one eyebrow arched in mild amusement. Reggie offered him a small smile before taking a sip of her glass again.

"It's not one of his favorite things, no, but he's gotten the hang of it," Dean explained as he raised his glass to his lips. "You'd actually be surprised at how much he's…" Dean struggled to find the right words to describe the evolution of his angelic friend.

"Become human?" Reggie offered. Dean nodded his head and took a sip of his scotch. He placed the glass back on the bar and began running his finger along the rim again. "What?" Reggie asked after letting remain silent for a few minutes.

Dean shrugged his shoulders and pushed himself back from the bar, getting to his feet and strolling towards the pool tables. "A lot's happened since the last time we saw each other, Reggie. A lot's changed."

"I've noticed."

Dean turned towards Reggie, his eyes trailing over her slender figure before settling on her face. He watched as she reached up and swept her reddish-brown hair up into a ponytail at the top of her head. His eyes trailed down to the thin pink scar just along the left side of her collarbone.

Reggie caught Dean staring at the scar. She shook her head and hopped off the stool. "This wasn't your fault, Dean." She traced the scar as she walked towards him.

"Never claimed it was," Dean said. He'd let his anger bubble to the surface at the sight of that scar, at the memories it brought back, and let it ooze out through his response. He saw Reggie's eyes flash with some emotion. But instead of taking a deep breath and letting it go, Dean let it continue to build.

"Stop it!" Reggie snapped.

"Stop what?" Dean snapped back.

"Stop putting all this shit on yourself, Dean. Everything that's happened - with Sam and Ruby, with Cass, with Bobby - was all beyond your control."

"Beyond my control? _Beyond _my_ control_?" Dean roared. "You don't know what the _hell_ you're talking about, Reggie!" He felt his hands automatically ball into fists, the desire to hit something burning bright within him. "Do you have any idea what has happened in the last year?" Dean yelled.

"I have some idea, yes," Reggie replied. Dean glared at her, both of his eyebrows raised in disbelief. "Okay, so maybe Bobby told me…"

"Bobby has a big mouth," Dean snapped.

He turned around, grabbed the cue ball on the nearest table, and shoved it down the pool table. It bounced off the end and began to roll back towards him. Dean caught it in his hand and sent it rolling again, using the motion to keep his anger focused on something innocuous.

A thought suddenly occurred to Dean. He spun around to face Reggie.

"_Why?"_

Reggie blinked at Dean, confused. "Why what?"

"Why have you and Bobby been gossiping behind my back?" Dean growled out.

"Dean," Reggie said in a hurt tone. "It's not like that."

"No? Then what's it like?" Dean could feel the anger ebbing away as he watched Reggie flinch back from his words.

"I call Bobby sometimes. To check in."

Reggie circled around Dean and strolled down the length of the pool table. She stopped at the end and grabbed the cue ball from where it had rolled to a stop the last time Dean had pushed it away. She began to roll it back and forth between her hands, her eyes focused on the small white ball.

"And sometimes, when I do, I ask about you." Dean watched as color creeped into Reggie's cheeks, turning them a bright pink. As the color of embarrassment flooded her face, Dean felt the last of his anger fade away.

"Why?" he asked, his voice a gruff echo of a moment ago.

Reggie looked up at him, a frown on her face. "Because I care about you, Dean." She rolled the cue ball towards him. Dean caught it and rolled it back, allowing Reggie's words to hang in the air for a minute.

"I care what happens to you and Sam. I don't pry, but I check with Bobby. I'll ask him if he's heard from you. Whether you guys need help with anything."

Reggie sighed, catching the cue ball as Dean rolled it back to her again, and began spinning it.

"You could've just…called," Dean said with a chuckle.

Reggie looked up and smiled. "Yeah, I guess I could have. But it didn't feel right. The way we left things last time…"

"If I remember correctly, we left things pretty damn good."

Reggie laughed. The sound was musical. It made Dean smile, the first genuine smile in a long time.

"No, I guess it wasn't _awful_," she said as she moved back down the pool table towards him.

Dean reached up and clutched at his chest, feigning a wound to his heart. "Wow, I think I'm a little hurt."

Reggie shook her head, laughing, and leaned against the pool table beside Dean. Reggie shrugged and nudged Dean with her shoulder. "Calling Bobby was just…easier."

"You and Bobby just like to gossip like little girls," Dean teased.

"If you haven't noticed, I _am_ a girl," Reggie teased back, nudging Dean again. He nudged her back and pushed away from the pool table, turning to stand directly in front of Reggie.

"I'm pretty sure I noticed that a long time ago." Dean leaned in and kissed Reggie on the forehead before taking a step back to put some space between them. "The thing I can't figure out is how in the hell did you wind up here." Dean gestured around them at Coogan's and watched as Reggie stood up and walked back to the bar.

"It's a long story," she finally said after picking up her glass and draining the scotch inside. She poured herself another drink before turning to face Dean. "And the other hunters…they're not always so…"

"Hostile?" Dean interjected. He took the stool beside Reggie, but left his glass untouched. "That's not what I was referring to though when I asked you how you wound up here. What I want to know is how a bunch of hunters wound up in a bar in Dover, Delaware."

"It's the Apocalypse, Dean. Sort of an "all hands on deck" kind of situation, you know."

"No, Reggie. This isn't your fight."

"Don't, Dean. Don't get all chauvinistic on me," Reggie snapped.

"This isn't about that," Dean growled out. He pounded his hands on the bar top, causing his glass to go skittering over the side. It landed on the floor with loud crash. "Dammit, Reggie. Don't you get it? Your friend Quinn is right. Being around Sam and me…it's dangerous. It'll get you killed."

"Like Ellen and Jo Harvelle?"

Dean felt his veins turn to ice at Reggie's words. He froze where he stood, both hands palm down on the bar, his chest barely moving as he struggled to breath.

"I understand what it feels like to lose people you care about. You know that more than anyone." Dean flinched and Reggie rushed on. "But I was born into a family of hunters. I was raised - trained - to be one since I was old enough to hold a gun.

"I know what I'm doing. I understand what I'm getting myself into, just as much as Ellen and Jo did. And whether you and Sam are here on Dover or someplace else, I'm going to be a part of _this battle_ no matter what." Reggie placed a hand on Dean's shoulder and gave it a gentle squeeze.

"It's part of who I am, Dean. I can't run from it anymore than you can."

Dean felt Reggie begin to pull her hand away. He reached up and grabbed it, holding it in place. "I get that, I do," he began, his voice a rough whisper. "But the way you put yourself in that guy's line of fire tonight." Dean shook his head and turned to look at Reggie over his shoulder. "I can't let you do that. Not for Sam and certainly not for me."

Dean walked away, heading down the long hallway and to, what he hoped was the bedrooms. "Sam and I will hit the road tomorrow once he's had some rest."

He heard Reggie following behind him. He turned to tell her to leave him alone when he saw that Reggie held his leather jacket in her small hands.

"What about the Impala?" Reggie asked, holding onto the jacket for a moment before letting Dean have it.

Dean blinked at Reggie, confused. Then he remembered the lie Sam had used on the side of the highway and Dean blanched. He'd forgotten that there was something supposed to be wrong with his classic car.

"I'll take a look it first thing in the morning. I'm sure it's nothing serious."

Reggie stared at Dean, reading his face. Then she tipped her head for Dean to follow her and led him up a set of stairs to another long hallway. This one ran perpendicular to the one they'd left below and was lined with doors on each side, almost all of them closed. Reggie stopped outside the second to last door on the right side of the hall, one of the few doors that stood open, and turned to face Dean.

"I need your help, Dean. If you don't want to, that's fine, but I would appreciate it if you and Sam would at least stick around long enough to hear me out."

"Okay," Dean said.

"You can take this room for the night. Sam should be in the one across the way and I'm next to him." Reggie pointed the doors out as she spoke, avoiding looking directly at Dean. She stepped towards her bedroom door, her eyes on the gray carpet at her feet.

"Reggie," Dean called out just as she was about to step inside. She looked up at him, finally meeting his gaze. "I can't make any promises."

Reggie blinked at him and nodded her head. "I've never expected you to," she replied softly. "Goodnight." Reggie stepped all the way into her room and shut the door quietly behind her.

* * *

***As previously stated, I will post my Musical Playlist at the completion of this story.***


	7. Chapter 7

_For both **Disclaimer** and **Spoiler Alert**, please see Chapter 1._

So...here's the next bit. This story is becoming very music heavy... Anyway, It is what it is. Hope you like it. Please PLEASE Review.

**

* * *

**

**Seven**

Sam lay in bed, listening to Dean and Reggie talking outside his door. Reggie had asked Dean for help, a request Sam knew his older brother wasn't going to disregard easily. But Sam also knew that Dean was still reeling from Jo and Ellen Harvelle's deaths. The desire to help Reggie and his need to protect her were going to create a terrible conflict for Dean.

Sam turned over onto his side as he heard Reggie say goodnight, staring at the wall he knew belonged to the young woman's bedroom. She was a good friend and friends were something which neither Dean nor Sam had to use more than one had to count. And that number was steadily decreasing as they fought the war between Heaven and Hell.

Sam sighed and closed his eyes, wishing his head would stop pounding long enough for him to drift off for a few hours. He didn't think he had a concussion, but between the blow to his head and the massive amount of sleep deprivation he was suffering from, Sam felt like someone was sawing into his skull with a butter knife.

There was a light knock on his bedroom door and Sam slipped his hand under the pillow beneath his head and pulled out his chrome-handled Taurus 9mm. Normally, he wasn't one to sleep with a weapon, but after the scene downstairs in the bar, he'd decided safe was better than sorry.

"Who's there?" Sam called gently, getting awkwardly to his feet. He shuffled to the door just as a soft voice answered.

"It's Reggie."

Sam stared at the door for a moment, perplexed. _What did Reggie want with him?_ Stowing the gun on the top of the dresser beside the door, Sam quickly unlocked and opened the door. Sure enough, Reggie stood before him, dressed in grey sweatpants and an oversized black t-shirt.

"I figured you might need something to ease the pain," Reggie stated, opening her hand to reveal two oblong white tablets in her palm. In her other hand, she held a glass water. Sam gave her a grateful smile and took the proffered pills and water.

"Thanks. As much as I wanted to, I couldn't bring myself to ask Dean if he could let me rummage through the First Aid kit."

Sam moved away from the door and sat down on the end of his bed. He took another sip of water as he ran his free hand through his tangled brown hair.

"I figured as much," Reggie said. She leaned against the doorjamb, her arms crossed over her chest.

Reggie's silence was becoming unnerving so Sam cleared his throat and met her gaze. "So…" he drawled out, suddenly at a loss for words.

"Sam, I need to ask a favor," Reggie stated, glancing over her shoulder before stepping into the room and closing the door behind her.

"Um…sure."

Reggie began to pace in front of Sam. Three paces one way then three paces the other. It was so Dean-like that it took Sam a moment to find his voice again.

"I kind of overheard you and Dean earlier."

Reggie stopped and turned towards Sam. "I know you and Dean have had a rough time lately and he'd rather hit the road then stick around, but what's going on here…" Reggie shook her head and began to pace again.

"What _is_ going on here, Reggie?" Sam was beginning to feel the effects of the painkillers, the pounding in his head abating to a nagging throb.

"Well, you know about the books..."

"Actually, what we know is that both demons and hunters alike are looking for what's supposed to be the original books of Solomon," Sam cut in. "Not exactly much."

Reggie stopped pacing again and flopped down beside Sam on the bed. "I wish I could give you more, but right now is not the best time to discuss minute details." Reggie reached up and ran her hands through her hair. She sighed before dropping her head into her hands. "I don't know who to trust, Sam," she said, her voice slightly muffled by her hands.

Sam frowned at the back of Reggie's head. "What do you mean?"

"What I mean is that, aside from now you and Dean, there aren't very many people around here that I would trust enough to lend them a t-shirt let alone drive the Plymouth."

Sam chuckled at Reggie. "Only you and Dean would measure your confidence in someone by your willingness to hand over the keys to your car."

"Yeah, well. When you've put in as much blood, sweat and tears into something like we have, you tend to be a bit…"

"Overprotective."

"Pretty much," Reggie replied with a chuckle, finally looking up to meet Sam's gaze. Her face grew suddenly serious. "Look, Sam. The favor I have to ask is, while you and Dean are hanging around, can you keep an eye on everyone? See if maybe you notice anything…peculiar?"

"Peculiar how?"

"Acting funny. Sneaky or shifty."

"Reggie, you do realize you're asking me to watch a bunch of hunters to see if they're acting suspicious. Kind of the definition of their general state, don't you think?"

"I know it's going to be a bit difficult, but I really need a second pair of eyes, Sam. And I know that if I ask Dean, he's going to pack up the Impala, throw me in the trunk, and drive off in a spray of gravel and dust."

Sam nodded his head, knowing Dean's reaction to her request was pretty accurate. "Okay, I'll keep an eye out. But can you at least tell me why you're still here if you think there's something off about the company you're suddenly keeping?"

Reggie eyed Sam for a moment, the weight of her thoughts heavy behind her eyes. "I think there's a traitor in our midst," she finally stated, her voice lowering to a whisper. She glanced towards the closed bedroom door and then back at Sam. "Those demons tonight were expecting us to show up. I want to know how. We've kept tight-lipped about our recon so I can't figure out how they knew we'd be there. Why they had time to set up a bomb and…"

Sam's eyebrows jumped skyward in shock. "A bomb?"

"Yeah, a bomb. From what I saw, before all hell broke loose, most of the basement of the Hardelle house was riddle with charges set throughout the structure, including one on the water heater. It was extremely strategic, Sam. Something they'd done with a lot of forethought."

"And the only way they could have done that would be if they knew when you were going to show up," Sam said, finishing Reggie's thought. Reggie nodded her head, a solemn look on her face.

"Look. I know it's a lot to ask and I know you might not be around long enough to really offer much help, but I'm getting a little desperate, Sam. I wouldn't want any of these people to die because of something I could have prevented."

Sam stared at Reggie, hearing Dean's voice mingled with hers as she spoke. It was eerie how much the two of them were alike. Sam knew that was what drew his older brother to the young woman. Sam also knew that that connection was what made Dean want to go running in the opposite direction now. Dean wouldn't be able to handle it if Reggie was hurt or killed as a result of the heavenly crap currently raining down on them. At the same time, Sam knew that if Reggie was asking for help, she really needed it.

"It's going to be a bit difficult to convince Dean to stick around without revealing the real reason," Sam said.

"I know," Reggie said with a sigh. "I shouldn't be asking you to do this, Sam. Not after what's happened between the two of you. But I'm all out of options. If I can't figure out what's going on here, I'm afraid a lot of people are going to die."

Sam reached out and put a comforting hand on Reggie's shoulder. "I'll help in any way I can."

Reggie gave Sam a small smile. "Thanks. I appreciate it, Sam," she said, getting to her feet. "Now try and get some sleep. And if you need more meds, you know where to find me."

Sam nodded at Reggie and watched as she slipped out the door, closing it gently behind him. Sam sat staring at the closed door for a few moments, letting the pain meds and Reggie's words roll over his aching skull.

When he began to feel the groggy effects of the narcotics, Sam slid back on the bed, rolled onto his stomach, and finally succumb to sleep.

**V V V V V V V V V V V V V V**

Sam bolted upright in bed, his heart and head pounding. The nightmare he'd been having still clung to the edges of consciousness; Dean and Reggie lay broken and bloody at his feet. There was a mirror across the room, Sam's face lit with a maniacal smile reflecting back at him. Sam knew it was Lucifer he was seeing in those cold, calculating eyes, but that knowledge did little to assuage his blind terror.

He and Dean were fighting what felt like a hopeless battle, the possibility of losing that fight still a frighteningly probable future. The idea of having Lucifer inside of him made Sam shiver. He shifted so that he could untangle himself from the covers and slipped out of bed.

Sam had to throw out a hand to steady himself when a sudden wave of nausea overwhelmed him. He glanced at his watch, expecting to see that only a few minutes had passed since Reggie had left his room a little past four. Instead, he saw that it was nearly noon.

"Thank god for modern medicine," Sam muttered, grateful for the medicinal slumber.

Sam pulled on his boots, grabbed his Taurus from the top of the dresser where he'd left it, and went in search of his brother.

As he descended the stairs, the aroma of bacon hit him and Sam felt his mouth water automatically in response. Sam walked into the bar and the red-haired woman from the night before puttering behind the bar, her short hair tucked behind her ears as she hummed a song Sam couldn't identify.

"Mornin', Sam," the woman said, her words lilted with a heavy accent. "There may still be some breakfast left in the kitchen if you're interested."

She finally turned to face Sam, a smile turning up the edges of her lips, and Sam was struck dumb by the woman's eyes. They were a bluish-green, almost an aquamarine color, and wide beneath long, dark eyelashes. The light pink across her cheeks that colored her otherwise ivory complexion was offset by a sprinkling of freckles across the bridge of her nose.

"Thanks," Sam finally managed to reply.

"Sorry 'bout last night," she said.

She began to wipe the bar top, the white rag in her hand moving in hypnotic circles. Sam followed it with his eyes for a moment before shaking his head and looking back up at the woman.

"I'm Keily, by the way. Keily McCarthy."

"Nice to officially meet you," Sam said, offering Keily his hand. She shook it, her grasp firmer than Sam expected, before returning to her work.

"Aye. I wish Quinn would learn to hold that bloody temper of his," Keily said, shaking her head and frowning at her hands. "You have to understand, we're all a bit on the jumpy side these days. What with the current state of things."

"The guy pulled a gun on my brother, Keily," Sam stated with a bit more attitude than he'd intended. Keily looked up at him, her aquamarine-colored eyes sharp behind her long lashes. "Dean doesn't always make the best first impressions, but your friend Quinn definitely needs to work on his warm welcomes," he added in a friendlier tone.

Just as Keily opened her mouth to reply a voice speaking rapidly in a language Sam couldn't discern interrupted her. Keily's twin stepped out of the kitchen, a white plate loaded with scrambled eggs, bacon, and toast in his hands. Keily replied in clipped sentences in the same language. Sam was finally able to recognize it as Gaelic.

"Sam, this is my brother Kearney," Keily said a moment later, her cheeks a bright red now.

Sam could tell just from her tone that she was irritated at whatever her brother had said to her. Kearney placed the plate on the bar in front of Sam, nodded his head in acknowledgement, before turning around and disappearing back into the kitchen.

"Sorry about his manners," Keily said, glaring after her brother. She turned back to Sam, a forced smile on her lips. "He seems to have gotten up on the wrong side of the bed this mornin'." She shook her head and pushed the plate towards Sam, wiping the spot where her brother had originally placed it again. "Why don't ya pull up a stool and dig in."

Sam stared down at the food for a moment before deciding that it might be better if he took the plate and went in search of Dean. "Do you know where I might be able to find my brother?" he asked Keily, taking the metal fork she'd just pulled from under the bar.

"Aye. I saw Reggie and him headin' off towards their cars so they're probably over in the garage." Keily dropped the cloth onto the counter and wiped her hands on the white apron tied around her tiny waist. "If ya head out that door there and make a left, it's 'round back."

"Thanks," Sam said. He nodded his thanks again for the food as he picked up the plate and left the bar, Keily's rapid-fire Gaelic tirade following him through the door.

Sam stepped outside into the bright day, feeling the warmth of the sunlight soak into his skin. As he strolled alongside the bar, heading to the rear of the building as Keily had directed, he began to pick at the plate of food. The eggs, while still warm, desperately needed salt and pepper. But he was so ravenous that he shoveled almost two-thirds of the portion into his mouth before he'd made it halfway down the street.

There was little traffic on the side street that ran alongside the bar, but Sam could hear traffic on the main road in front, the cars passing by in a steady buzz. As he neared the end of the brick building, he could hear faint music drifting towards him. Sam quickly recognized it as Led Zeppelin's "In the Evening", the chorus carrying on the soft breeze blowing around him. Sam rounded the corner and found himself looking across a wide lot, a full automotive garage along the other end of a wide parking lot.

Both the Impala and Reggie's Plymouth were parked in front, the trunk of the Impala open like a gaping mouth. As Sam got closer, he could hear his brother and Reggie's voices interspersed with the music.

"…I had to replace the carburetor last year and switched out most of the belts just before winter started," Reggie was saying as Sam approached.

"How about the filters?" Dean asked, looking up at Sam as he stepped up beside the Plymouth's passenger side.

"Changed them when I switched out the carburetor." Reggie glanced up and gave Sam a quick welcoming smile before returning her eyes to the inside of the Plymouth's hood. "I thought maybe the catalytic converter was bad, but I ran a diagnostic check and it came back fine."

Dean frowned down at the Plymouth's engine, his bottom lip slipping beneath his teeth for a moment as he bit on it in a look of intense concentration Sam knew all too well. Sam propped himself against the driver's side door of the Impala, noticing that the black car's hood was also open, before going back to watching Dean and Reggie work on the Plymouth.

"And it's making what kind of noise again?" Dean asked a moment later. He stepped away from the dark blue car long enough to snag a slice of bacon off Sam's plate.

Reggie made a screeching noise with an annoyed look on her face. "I told you. It's got me completely stumped."

"How often does it happen?" Dean asked as he popped the last of the slice of bacon into his mouth and wiped his fingers on the leg of his jeans.

"Not often. Usually only after a heavy rain," Reggie replied. She leaned her hip against the grill of the Plymouth and watched Dean as he scanned the car's parts. "I'd like to say it's my imagination, but even Dag made a comment about how bad she sounded the last time it happened."

Sam stood watching Dean and Reggie, a grin pulling at the corners of his mouth. It wasn't often that Dean got the opportunity to talk cars with a fellow buff. Sam neither wanted, nor was fascinated enough, to care. It was entertaining to watch how Dean would shift from foot to foot as he thought to himself, his eyes completely focused on the car and its parts. Seeing Dean in this relaxed, almost pleasant, mood was something Sam hadn't witnessed in a long time.

"Have you checked the timing belt?'

Reggie gave an exasperated grunt in response, glaring at Dean as he leaned under the hood and tugged on something. Dean must have missed her reaction because a second later he looked up at Reggie, his eyebrow cocked as he waited for her answer.

"For Christ's sake, yes!" Reggie snapped at him. Dean cocked both eyebrows and rocked back onto his heels, hooking his hands into the tops of the front pockets of his jeans. Reggie sighed and tipped her head. "Sorry. It's just…I hate not being able to fix my car."

Dean nodded his head at her. "It's proving to be a tough one, but we'll figure it out."

Sam leaned against the Impala finishing his food before his brother could steal anymore, watching Dean and Reggie tinker with the Plymouth, as the music drifted around them. The disc-jockey came on after a series of commercials and promised a thirty minute classic rock block. Faces "Stay With Me" blasted from, what Sam now realized, were both the Impala and the Plymouth's speakers.

"How's the head?" Dean asked a few minutes later, his right hand covered in grease as he removed a spark plug from somewhere and handed it to Reggie, a red rag in her hands.

"Oh, so you remembered I was here," Sam said with a chuckle.

"Sorry Sam," Reggie said. She finished cleaning the spark plug and handed it back to Dean. "Dean and I checked out the Impala and then I kind of monopolized his help in figuring out what's been causing the Plymouth phantom squeal."

"I gathered," Sam replied. He watched as Dean ducked back under the hood and heard the familiar sound of a socket wrench. "Wish you guys would have woken me up a while ago. Maybe I could have helped."

Sam heard Dean snort, the sound only slightly muffled. "With what? Fetching us bottles of water? Dabbing our dewy brows?" Dean stood up, wiping his hands on his own rag.

"Dewy brows? Dude, you need to lay off the _Dr. Sexy."_

Reggie's eyebrows shot up, a wide grin stretching across her face. "_You_ watch _Dr. Sexy, M.D._?"

"I may have caught it once or twice," Dean said, glaring at Sam. Sam's devious smile was wiped from his face by a sudden yawn. Dean used it to get the conversation back on more comfortable ground. "You obviously needed the sleep more than you needed to be out here twitching with boredom."

Sam conceded with a nod of his head. "Okay, so automotive repair isn't my thing, but at least I could have offered morale support."

Dean and Reggie laughed as Dean tossed the greasy rag at Sam as he moved to the Impala's open hood.

After one last look inside, he closed the hood with a heavy thump, and sat against the chrome grill. "We can hit the road whenever you're ready, Sam," Dean said, his eyes focused, not on Sam, but on Reggie's profile as she continued to stare down into the Plymouth.

"Yeah, okay," Sam said slowly. He could feel the tension crackling in the atmosphere around them. Dean glanced at him, catching Sam's eye for a moment, before going back to watching Reggie.

"I told you we'd hear you out. So, let's hear it," Dean finally said when it became apparent Reggie wasn't going to talk.

"What can I say, Dean," Reggie replied with a heavy sigh.

She turned to face them, her eyes going directly to Dean's. Sam saw the perceptible change in Reggie as she looked at Dean, the infinitesimal softening of her features, the piercing focus of her eyes. It gave Sam goosebumps and made him physically react. He wanted to step up to Reggie and put his arms around her, wanted to bury his face in her hair and tell her that everything was going to be okay.

"How about just starting with the basics?"

Reggie quickly glanced at Sam. "Well, you know about the books."

Dean held up his hand. "Actually, brainy boy wonder over here knows about them. I've got no idea what the hell the big deal is."

Sam shook his head at his brother. Dean never was one for research.

"Okay, so I'll give you the cliff notes version," Reggie said. "You know who Solomon was, right?"

Dean nodded at Reggie, but kept quiet, allowing her to continue.

"Well, these books are the mother of all grimoires. They're filled with every spell and conjuration for dealing with demons you can think of. The rumor is that one of these books has a reference to Lucifer himself."

"Are you saying that there's a spell in one of those books that can kill the devil?" Dean interrupted. His voice oozed with disbelief, but Sam saw the hope hidden behind his brother's green eyes.

"That's the problem," Reggie said, shaking her head. "Since it's a rumor, the details are kind of sketchy. It could be a spell to kill him, a spell to call him, or maybe something that will send Lucifer's fallen-angel ass back to Hell."

Sam knew he had to be the voice of reason. "They're just rumors though. You don't have anything concrete?"

"Yet," Reggie said, hooking her thumbs into the belt loops of her snug blue jeans. "There has to be something important in the books for the demons to be going to so much trouble to locate them. If we can get to them first…"

"That's the hitch in your plan, isn't it?" Dean growled out. "You're no closer to finding the damn books any more than they are, are you?"

Reggie blanched and looked down at her boots. "It's not the most solid plan…"

"You think?" Dean yelled. He shoved away from the Impala and scrubbed his face with both hands, a thing Sam knew Dean did when he was frustrated. "God, Reggie. You of all people should know better than to go chasing after some stupid gossip!"

"Would you stop screaming at me," Reggie snapped, her cheeks flushed a bright pink in anger. "_You_ dropped into _my_ hunt, Dean. Not the other way around! If you don't like it, fine, it's just…"

Reggie's anger deflated like a balloon, the color washing out of her face as she went back to staring at her feet. Sam was overwhelmed with the urge to comfort Reggie again.

"What do you want from me," Dean managed to finally say, his voice gravelly and low. He turned and slumped against the Impala again. "What do you want from us?"

Reggie looked up at Dean. "I just… I need your help."

Sam's head turned to Dean, his eyes Ping-Ponging between his brother and Reggie. He saw Dean blink at Reggie, his eyes searching her face. The silence seemed to stretch painfully between them.

"I don't think having us around is going to help," Dean finally said. Sam's eyes moved back to Reggie. He saw her flinch at the meaning beneath his brother's words.

"I know that things have been kind of intense lately," Reggie began.

"Intense? Reggie, we're chin deep in the universe's largest crap heap!" Dean interrupted. "You know what's happened. How the people around us have been dropping like flies."

Dean gripped the Impala's grill, his knuckles turning a pale white, his eyes focused on the wall of the garage in front of him. Sam watched Reggie take a step forward. He held up his hand, trying to warn her to stay back and allow his brother some space. Instead she ignored Sam, brushing past his outstretched hand.

"I can't force you to stick around, Dean, but you know I wouldn't ask you to stay unless I truly needed you to," Reggie said. Sam had to strain to hear her words, her voice a soothing whisper just barely louder than the music.

Dean looked up at Reggie, his green eyes pleading with Reggie's. Sam saw his brother's shoulders slump forward in defeat a minute later.

"Alright," Dean said. "Sam and I will stick around for a few days. See if we can't help you figure out where the hell these books are. But only for a few days. After that, Sammy and I hit the road. Okay?"

Reggie's head bobbed up and down in understanding. Then Dean cleared his throat and shoved away from the Impala, the intensity of the moment fizzling out.

"In the meantime, I think I've figured out what's wrong with the Plymouth," Dean said with a sly grin.

* * *

***As previously stated, I will post my Musical Playlist at the completion of this story.***


	8. Chapter 8

_For both **Disclaimer** and **Spoiler Alert**, please see Chapter 1._

Okay, so it's been awhile and I've been writing all sorts of stuff so I figured I would try and motivate myself to finalize this story by publishing on here. Hope you enjoy it! More to come...

Please review - whether you loved it, hated it, or whatever emotions it evoked... Thanks!

* * *

Dean stood in Coogan's bar, his eyes taking in his surroundings like a marine entrenched in enemy territory. It made sense considering he'd learned the habit from John, who'd been a marine long before he'd become a hunter. And Dean _was_ in enemy territory, technically, although he hadn't seen Quinn around since the previous night. Dean knew that was because of Reggie.

After finding and replacing the belt causing the Plymouth's horrible screech, Reggie had taken him and Sam on a grand tour.

Coogan's Bar was just a cover, a façade that masked the compound built right out in the open. The basement was compartmented into three large rooms. One was the weapons depot, where they had stored everything from throwing darts to gun powder. The second area was a training space; two walls covered in floor to ceiling mirrors and a third wall in targets. Punching bags hung from the ceiling.

The final space was a combination church and conference room. Pews lined the back of the room, all of them facing toward a wall with a whiteboard and a large, flat-screen television. Reggie had explained that, while there was no actual priest currently with the group, there had been one previously. When Sam had asked what happened to the man, Reggie had merely stated that he'd left after a long talk with Dag.

Next, Reggie had shown them the kitchen, which turned out to be the size of one you'd usually find in a fully functioning restaurant. It was filled with stainless steel appliances and white china, all of it immaculately clean.

"Kearney does most of the cooking, but anyone is welcome to help themselves," she said when she'd caught Dean eyeing the large bag of pepperoni inside one of the refrigerators.

Reggie had explained rather than shown them the rest of the living quarters, which not only consisted of the bar's entire second floor, but a connecting building as well. She had tried to be inconspicuous about it, but Dean had a feeling that the reason she wasn't giving them the complete tour was because that was where Quinn probably resided.

After returning them to the barroom, Reggie had gone off to get a shower, leaving Sam and Dean alone. Five minutes after Reggie disappeared, Sam had muttered about needing to check out something on his laptop, and walked off. Dean had strolled around the barroom, looking at the knickknacks and pictures decorating the walls.

Most of the pictures were of seascapes and castles in Ireland, Dean assumed since it went with the rest of bar's theme. He had been concentrating on identifying a particular foreign car when his cell phone began to ring, the tinny version of Black Sabbath's "War Pigs" startling him. Without looking at the caller ID, Dean answered.

"Hello."

"Dean? It's me, Castiel." Castiel's gruff voice sounded unsure and nervous.

"Hey Cass. What's up?" Dean rolled his eyes as he heard Castiel press a few buttons on the phone, presumably trying to redial the phone. "Cass!" Dean yelled when the beeping continued.

"Oh, you're there," Castiel said, sounding relieved. "Good. I need you to tell me where you are."

"Why? What's wrong?" Dean asked, his heartbeat picking up as the dread began to settle in.

"Nothing. I just don't really like talking on this cell phone," Castiel said, spitting out the last part as if he'd tasted something disgusting.

"We're in Dover. A bar called Coogan's," Dean said with a small chuckle. He flipped the phone closed and turned, finding the angel standing behind him, the tail of Castiel's grey trench coat flapping lightly around his legs. "So what's going on?"

"Are we alone?"

Dean stared at the dark haired man in front of him before glancing around the room. "Yeah, pretty much, Cass. Unless you can see someone draped in an invisibility cloak lurking in the shadows?"

Castiel scanned the room, his blue eyes sharp and focused. After a moment he turned back to Dean. "No. We're alone." Cass took a step back, and then paused, his lips turning down in a frown. "Dean, what is an 'invisibility cloak'?"

Dean gaped at his angelic friend for a moment. "It's…" Dean began before throwing up his hand and waving away the thought. "You know what, just forget it. It's not important."

Dean pulled one of the chairs off the nearest table and set it upright on the floor. He pulled another down and waved his hand at it, before sitting down.

"So? What are you doing here?"

Instead of taking the chair Dean had offered him, Cass began to pace. "There have been whispers. Rumors that Lucifer is looking for something."

"The Books of Solomon perhaps?"

"Yes, exactly." Castiel turned back to Dean. "Wait. How did you know that?"

"Because I kind of dragged him into the middle of the search," a voice stated from the darkened hallway. Reggie stepped into the barroom dressed in dark jeans and a snug fitting black t-shirt, her damp hair hanging in ringlets around her face. "Good to see you again, Cass."

"Reggie Connors. Good to see you too," Castiel replied, bowing his head in a formal greeting that made the corners of Reggie's mouth twitch with a grin. He turned back to Dean, an eyebrow cocked in question. "She called you?" Castiel asked.

"No, not exactly," Dean answered. "We kind of ran into each other on a…job." Dean glanced at Reggie, her green eyes flicking between Castiel's back and Dean. "Bobby sent Sam and me here to Dover and Reggie asked us to stay."

"Do you have the books?" Castiel asked.

"No, but we'll get them," Reggie said, the words rushing out of her as she attempted to beat Dean's reply. He glared at her and she glared defiantly back.

"You have to. If the demons get them first, there's no telling the damage that can be done," Castiel said, a grave look on his face.

"What does 'ol Lucy want with the books?" Dean asked, twisting the ring on his finger in a nervous habit he'd picked up from his father.

"I'm unsure since there isn't much information out there, but it's believed he wants to destroy them," Castiel replied. He glanced over at Reggie who leaned against the bar, her arms crossed over her chest. "There is something that could explain why some of the demons are searching for the books."

"You mean besides trying to win first place in the "Biggest Brown Noser's" race?" Reggie asked, pushing away from the bar and walking over to Dean and Castiel.

"There's a spell, hidden within one of the books, written on a sealed page…" Castiel began to explain.

"Which would be why it's a "hidden spell"," Dean muttered under his breath.

"…that will hide any living being from Lucifer. Indefinitely," Castiel finished dramatically.

Dean shot to his feet. "You mean there's a spell that can keep Lucifer from finding someone, no matter what they do or say?"

The hope was too much. Dean felt like he was being crushed by a wave of it. He felt a hand on his arm, the touch delicate and warm, and looked down. A small hand held his wrist, giving it a gentle squeeze. Dean's eyes slowly traced the hand to the arm then to the body it was connected to, finally looking up into Reggie's soft green eyes.

"It may exist, yes," Castiel said. He frowned at Dean and shook his head. "It's only a rumor, Dean. Until we find the books and read them ourselves, we can't be sure. It could just be a "wild goose chase", as you would say."

"Then we find the books before Lucifer or anyone else," Reggie stated with conviction. Dean stared at her, watching as the muscle in her jaw jumped, her green eyes alight with a fire he'd only seen once before; in the living room of her home in Lisbon shortly after her uncle had been killed.

Dean swallowed against the lump in his throat, the guilt of that memory churning in his stomach, and turned back to Castiel. "So. Any ideas on where to find the damn things?"

"I think I might have an idea," Sam said, striding into the room, his laptop in his hands.

**V**

Dean sat on the end of his bed, staring down at his hands as they rested on the tops of his jean-clad thighs. Information bounced like ping pong balls around his head, thoughts jumbled together in incoherent sentences. Sam had done some research on Jacob Hardelle and found that the man had been a curator for the Smithsonian back before he'd gotten married and settled down, eventually taking a teaching position at a small local college.

While working with the museum, Mr. Hardelle had been sent overseas to Cairo to inspect several artifacts for a possible exhibit. It had all seemed very mundane to Dean until Sam dropped the golden nugget. After traveling to Cairo, Jacob Hardelle had disappeared for almost three days and when he was found, roaming the streets of a rather seedy part of the city, he'd been muttering about finding "the keys to everything".

"The books are sometimes referred to as the "Keys of Solomon"," Sam explained at Dean's blank look.

"So Jake found the books and what? Snuck them home on the plane?"

"Well, I don't know how exactly he got them back in the states, but it makes sense that he just shipped them back with the other pieces for the exhibit." Sam had gone on to theorize on what Jacob Hardelle had done with the books once he'd gotten them into the United States.

After a while, Castiel had ventured off in search of more information on the supposed concealment spell and Sam had wandered off with his nose still attached to his computer screen leaving Dean alone with Reggie.

"You thought it was in the house, didn't you?" Dean had asked after sitting in silence for a while.

Reggie had shrugged her shoulders. "It was guess. And from the way the demons had the room rigged to blow, they thought it was probable too."

Too late Reggie had realized her slip, as Dean's hand dropped with a thunk onto the tabletop in front of him.

"Rigged to blow?" Dean had ground out. "There were bombs?"

Reggie had nodded her head. "That's what obliterated the house." Dean's mouth opened and closed as he floundered for words. "Look. I don't want to hear it, Dean," Reggie had snapped out, her cheeks flushing a deep pink when Dean's mouth clicked shut and he glared at her across the table. "It was stupid to go racing down into the basement like I did…"

"Damn right," Dean grumbled.

"…but it was my choice. It was too much of a risk not to go down there," Reggie said, ignoring Dean's comment. "You can't sit there and tell me that you wouldn't have done the same?"

Dean had tried to think of an argument, but found that, if the roles had been reversed, he would have charged into the basement just as Reggie had without a second thought. Reluctantly, Dean conceded to Reggie's point.

"Yeah, you're right. I probably would have."

Now Dean sat in his adopted bedroom, feeling like the weight on his shoulders had just gotten a little bit heavier. He didn't like the fact that everything in their lives always seemed to circle back to the great battle between Michael and Lucifer, Sam and Dean as their human Armani suits.

His stomach began to growl loudly, reminding him that even though he was battling the Apocalypse, he still had to eat. With a sigh, Dean got up and headed downstairs. Music drifted toward him as he made his way down the hallway to the barroom. Dean stopped in his tracks at the sight before him.

Reggie was dancing, swaying from table to table as she prepared the bar for business, her brown hair swirling around her face. Dean recognized the song and smiled at the memories it brought forth.

"I seem to remember this song playing in your car the last night we were in Bridgewater," Dean called out over the music. Reggie jumped and spun around, dropping the chair she'd been holding onto the wood floor with a bang.

"Jesus," she gasped, clutching at her chest. "Why the hell did you sneak up on me like that?"

"Guess you're not as acutely aware of your surroundings as you think you are," Dean said with a sly grin.

Reggie shook her head. "Enjoy it now because it won't happen again."

Dean chuckled and lifted the chair Reggie had dropped, setting it upright and sliding it in place. "We'll see."

They stared at each other a moment, the music fading off as it came to an end. Finally, Reggie looked away, reaching up to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear as she turned her head. It was an unconscious habit Dean was beginning to recognize as a sign of nervousness. He decided to take advantage of it.

"Do I make you nervous?" he asked, his voice low and gravelly.

Reggie looked back at Dean, setting him in her gaze. "Not at all," she replied coolly. She took a step forward, getting close enough that Dean could feel the heat radiating off her body. He watched as she nibbled on her bottom lip, causing it to plump up and turn a dark pink. "Do Imake _you_ nervous?"

It took Dean a moment to respond, his mouth suddenly dry. He cleared his throat and took a step back. "What's a guy gotta do to get a drink around here?" he asked in a vain attempt at subterfuge. Reggie chuckled and shook her head.

"Depends on the guy."

Reggie walked to the bar, Dean following at a distance behind her. She produced a glass from beneath and began to fill it with beer from the tap. Reggie dropped the glass in front of Dean and, with a smug smile, strolled off into the kitchen. Dean sat staring into the tawny liquid, trying to slow the thudding of his heart.

There was an attraction between them, there was no denying that, but Dean had hoped that their one night would have been enough to quell some of the more impassioned feelings. Instead it seemed to have only intensified them.

A plate bearing a cheeseburger and fries appeared in front of him. Dean looked up as Reggie set the plate down and snagged one of the fries. "Thought you might be hungry," she said, indicating the food.

"Yeah, a little," Dean relented. He picked up the burger and took a bite. It was juicy and flavorful; his mouth reacting instantly to the delicious food his stomach had been begging him for. Reggie reached out to take another fry, but Dean smacked her hand away. "Hey, get your own!" he said, curling his arm protectively around the plate with a grin.

"You ungrateful little…" Reggie growled teasingly.

"Don't ever try to come between a man and his meal," Dean said with a smile.

"So," Reggie drawled out, her tone causing Dean to look up at her. She was staring at him, a devilish smile on her face. "You never answered my question."

Dean gulped, forcing the mouthful of burger down. "What was that again?" he said, trying to delay.

Reggie chuckled and shook her head. "Tell you what. I'll let you get back to me." She reached out, grabbed a fry, and stuck it her mouth, a smug look on her face.

Dean continued to eat as he watched Reggie complete the routine of readying the bar. "Don't tell me you run this as an actual bar?" he asked her a few moments later, the realization of what she was doing finally hitting him.

"Why not? We can use the revenue and it _is_ a bar after all." Reggie hopped onto the stool next to Dean. "Besides, it's only three nights a week. Don't you think it would be more suspicious if there was a perfectly nice bar that appeared closed yet constantly had people coming and going from the premises?"

"You're hiding in plain sight. I like it," Dean said with a nod. Reggie smiled at him and had just opened her mouth when a shadow fell over her face. Her eyes narrowed and her lips pressed into a thin line of annoyance.

"Reggie, I need to talk to you," a voice stated from behind Dean.

Dean turned around and found himself under Quinn's icy stare. "Nice to see you again, Quinn," Dean said snidely.

Quinn glared at Dean for a moment before returning his eyes to Reggie. "Just give me a few minutes."

Dean heard Reggie sigh behind him. "Alright. Fine. But I'm only giving you three." Reggie got down from the stool and started across the bar.

Quinn took the moment while Reggie's back was turned to lean in toward Dean, his blue eyes fierce. "We're better off without you and your brother's help and the sooner you realize that, the better." Quinn hissed in a whisper.

Dean glared at the man, his jaw clenched tightly. Quinn met his gaze with a smug smile then he tipped his head and strolled away, leaving Dean glaring at the barroom wall.

Reggie and Quinn disappeared into the kitchen and a few minutes later, voices began to carry out to Dean. Reggie's grew gradually louder until, eventually, Dean could hear her clearly.

"I don't care, Quinn! Dag told you to stay the hell out of our way so do yourself a favor and follow his damn orders!" Reggie slammed back into the bar, her face a bright red. She was muttering incoherently under her breath. When she realized Dean was still sitting there she stopped short and glared at him. "What?"

Dean held his hands up in front of him. "I didn't say anything."

"No, but you have that look."

"What look?"

"The same one Quinn just had. The one that says you know what's best for me," Reggie said, her anger still evident in her tone.

"I never claimed I did," Dean placated. He shrugged his shoulders and got down off the stool, walking toward Reggie. "I do know you, though, and…"

"Dean, we've hardly spent more than ten days together," Reggie snapped, interrupting Dean. "That barely qualifies you to know which way I like my coffee."

It was apparent that whatever Quinn had said to Reggie had gotten under her skin so Dean just stood there, staring at Reggie, his hands in the pockets of his jeans.

"That was harsh, I'm sorry."

"No harm," Dean replied with a small smile. "You do have a point. A few days of fighting for our lives and one night together doesn't really give me a whole hell of a lot."

Reggie blushed and shook her head. "I was pissed and what I said was out of line."

"But it's true. Tell you what. I'll answer your question when you tell me a little bit about yourself," Dean said with a grin. Reggie stared at him, the corners of her mouth turning up in a reluctant smile.

"Fine. You've got yourself a deal," she said, her smile turning into a sly grin.

Just then, the bar's front door swung opened and both Reggie and Dean turned to see two men dressed in suits stepped inside. "Are you guys open?" one of them asked hesitantly.

"We sure are," Reggie said, smiling broadly at them. As Reggie headed around the bar to get the men the beers they'd ordered, Dean spotted Henry Dagwood standing in the doorway. The older man smiled at Dean and jerked his head for Dean to follow him. With a last look at Reggie, Dean headed after Dag.

He stepped out into the cool night, the brisk Delaware air causing his breath to rise in puffs in front of him. Dag stood at the corner of the street, a cigarette in one hand.

"You look so much like you dad, you know that son?" Dag said as Dean moved toward him. "You even have a similar walk."

While Dean had strived to be half the man John Winchester had been, he felt that aside from the brown leather jacket he wore and the same hazel eyes, Dean didn't think he was anything like his father. And he realized that he'd stopped wanting to be a long time ago.

"You knew my dad a very long time ago. He became a much different man," Dean said in response.

"It's the soul of a man that resonates to others, not his appearance," Dag said, flicking ash off the end of his cigarette before sticking it back between his lips. He took a long drag. "I suspect that you and your brother have a few questions for me, but I have to ask you to hold off for a little bit longer. As Reggie has probably told you, we're in the middle of something big here and while some of my colleagues may not be comfortable with your presence, I agree with Reggie. We can use all the help we can get."

"Look. Henry," Dean began.

"Please, call me Dag."

"Okay. Dag, then. I know you've probably heard about us, my brother and me. That you've heard rumors about what we've done. Do you really think our being here is helpful considering what you're looking for?"

Dag stood there for a moment, seeming to consider what Dean was asking. Then he smiled at Dean and nodded his head. "I've heard a thing or two about you boys, but I've also talked to Reggie. She believes that you have more of a right to find the Books of Solomon than we do and I agree." Dag flicked his cigarette into the street and looked down the long main street running in front of the bar. "We're both trying to achieve the same end anyway," he added as he turned back to Dean.

"I don't disagree, but having us here might cause more harm than good." Dean eyed Dag, trying to understand why this man was so readily accepting Sam and Dean's help if he knew what they had done. What they were supposed to do.

Almost the entire hunting world either wanted Sam and Dean dead or they ran in the opposite direction to avoid getting caught up in their battle.

"I guess we'll just wait and see." Dag clapped Dean on the shoulder and strolled back to the bar.

"Wait," Dean called out, spinning to face Dag. Dag stopped and turned back to Dean, waiting. "You do understand what Sam is supposed to do? What he's supposed to be?"

Dag nodded his head. "I do. But I'm a firm believer that we choose our own destiny, Dean. If Sam, or you for that matter, don't want what they've got planned for you, then you fight against it. You choose not to do what Heaven and Hell say you have to."

"And you trust us, just like that?"

"Reggie trusts you, Dean," Dag said as he reached out and opened the bar door. "That's enough for me." With that, Dag stepped into the bar, leaving Dean standing outside in the brisk night air.

* * *

***As previously stated, I will post my Musical Playlist at the completion of this story.***


	9. Chapter 9

_For both **Disclaimer** and **Spoiler Alert**, please see Chapter 1._

Hope you enjoy it! More to come...

Please review - whether you loved it, hated it, or whatever emotions it evoked... Thanks!

* * *

Sam sat at the bar, a glass of beer in front of him. He watched as Reggie bartended with expert precision, mixing and serving the busy bar as if she'd been doing it for a while. _She has been, _he thought to himself, realizing that it had been almost a year since he and Dean had seen the young woman. Had Reggie been working at this bar for most of that time? It wasn't like he or Dean had been keeping tabs on her.

"Penny for your thoughts," an accented voice asked from Sam's left. He turned his head to find Keily sliding onto the stool beside him. She smiled up at him, her aquamarine eyes sparkling with kindness.

"I was just watching Reggie. I didn't know she had bartending skills," Sam said, returning the smile.

"Aye. She's certainly not one for bein' idle," Keily said with a chuckle. The smile faded off her face as Kearney appeared beside Reggie, distributing several plates of food to a group of college guys sitting at the bar. "If it weren't for Reggie, you and your brother probably would have been run out of town by some of the others."

Sam lifted an eyebrow, feigning shock. "Really? Our presence is causing that much of an issue?"

Keily raised her eyes back to Sam's face. "Not that much. It's just that Quinn has a tendency for the dramatic and speaks his mind without thinkin' first." She smiled at Sam and picked up the glass of beer Reggie had placed in front of her as she passed by. "No need to worry, Sam. If you don't already know, Reggie can be very persuasive when she wants to be."

Sam laughed and glanced over at Reggie, who was chatting with the college guys as she poured a line of shots. As if sensing Sam's eyes, Reggie turned her head and gave Sam a smile, tilting her head and rolling her eyes in an exaggerated manner before returning to the college guys.

"I may have witnessed her powers of persuasion once or twice," Sam said with a chuckle. He watched Reggie as she continued to work, his stomach doing an uneasy flip as Reggie briefly morphed into the memory of Jo at The Road House the first time he and Dean had met the young woman. Sam quickly looked away as the memory created a lump of regret in his throat.

Sam cleared his throat and picked up his beer, sipping it as he used the mirrored wall to scan the patrons behind him. He saw Dean step into the bar, his brother's cheeks flushed a light pink from the cold. Dean spotted Sam at the bar and Sam watched Dean cross the bar, chuckling when he saw several pairs of eyes, all of them female, follow his older brother's progress.

"Hey, Sam," Dean said, greeting Keily with a nod as he slid onto the stool on Sam's right.

"Where were you?" Sam asked, indicating the door with a jerk of his head.

"Had a brief chat with Dag," Dean replied, casting Keily a hesitant glance. "Aren't you gonna introduce me to your new friend?"

"Keily, this is my brother Dean. Dean, this is Keily McCarthy." Keily nodded at Dean and extended her hand. Dean shook it before turning to Reggie as she appeared in front of him.

"You're a woman of many talents," Dean said with his trademark crooked grin. Reggie shook her head and leaned on the bar toward Dean.

"Dean Winchester, you don't know the half of it," she said, her lips pulling up into a matching smile.

She dropped a glass onto the bar top, whipped a bottle of whiskey from beneath, and spun it in her hand before pouring out the amber liquid in a long stream. She winked and slid the glass to Dean before hurrying away to attend to other customers, Sam, Dean, and Keily's laughter following her.

Dean took a sip of his drink and rotated in his stool so that he was facing the busy bar. Sam immediately recognized it as Dean's way of scanning the crowd, looking for any potential threats.

"I called Bobby and filled him in on everything," Sam said. Dean turned his head to give Sam a quick glance before nodding his head and returning his gaze to the barroom.

"What'd he think of all this Solomon stuff?"

"He thinks there's some merit to it." Sam watched his brother's profile catching the subtle way his eyelashes moved as Dean rolled his eyes. "Bobby said he was going to do some digging of his own. That he'd call us when he found anything that might help."

"_When_ he finds anything?" Dean scoffed, taking another swallow of whiskey. "Figures," Dean muttered into the mouth of his glass.

Sam knew his brother was struggling with same memories he was, submerged in an all too familiar atmosphere in Coogan's Bar, just by the way he worded his sentences. Dean was trying to be dismissive and snarky. But Sam also knew that Dean would keep his game face on and pretend that everything was copasetic, that he was just adding a few more bricks onto his already massive internal wall.

"We can use all the help we can get, man," Sam said, reaching up to brush his hair off his forehead. Keily still sat beside Sam, quietly listening to the conversation with his brother. Sam sighed and decided to let it go. He didn't need to argue with Dean in front of a complete stranger.

Sam turned to Keily and offered her a smile. "So…Keily," Sam drawled out, trying to think of something to say. Keily chuckled and shook her head.

"Not one for small talk, ay Sam?"

Sam chuckled. "I'm pretty good when the occasion calls for it."

For the next several hours, as the patrons in the bar came and went, Sam sat talking to Keily. He found out that she and her brother Kearney were from Laghey, a small village near Donegal in Ireland; that they'd only been in the States for a little over a year; and that, despite the Irish name, Coogan's had actually been run by an African American man without a drop of Irish heritage before another hunter bought it to use as a home base.

Keily told Sam about how she and Kearney were the only children in her village who spoke fluent Gaelic, an otherwise dead language in the country. She told him how they'd become hunters; Kearney, sixteen at the time, had stumbled upon a banshee feasting on the soul of the old farmer who lived down the lane from them. Convinced that he was crazy, their parents had tried to have him committed, causing Keily to help him run away. They'd been on the move ever since.

Dean, growing bored with the McCarthy tales, wandered down the bar and had taken up post on a stool at the end of the bar. Sam watched his brother as he struck up a conversation with Kearney.

"Seems my brother made a new friend," Sam remarked as Kearney's deep booming laugh resonated down the bar. Keily shook her head, smiling as she did.

"Aye. But somethin' tells me your brother could charm the hat off the Pope given half a chance."

Sam laughed and nodded his head. "Dean's definitely got the personality for it." Sam sat watching as Kearney refilled Dean's glass as Reggie tended to an older man sitting in a booth against the wall to Dean's right, frowning when he caught the man's glare. "I'm surprised he was able to win over Kearney so easily, though," Sam finally said when Reggie left the man at the table and his gaze fell to the plate of food in front of him.

"Kearney was never against havin' you and your brother here, Sam," Keily said, drawing Sam's eyes to her. He stared at her, confused. "You've misinterpreted Kearney's brusque attitude earlier. It wasn't directed at you, per se. More like the idea of you."

Sam cocked an eyebrow at Keily in puzzlement. Keily smiled and shook her head.

"My brother has a hard time with the fact that I'm not his _baby_ sister anymore," Keily elaborated. Sam felt his cheeks warm as he watched Keily blush, her ivory cheeks going a faint pink. "Kearney was bein' overprotective and unfortunately that translated into rude."

"Got it," Sam said, reaching out to grab his glass of beer. He glanced down the bar to Kearney and Dean, laughing at some joke Dean had just finished. "Not that I'm ungrateful to have a few more allies here, but can I ask why mine and Dean's presence doesn't worry you?" Sam asked a few seconds later, watching Keily's face in the mirrors in front of him.

Keily shrugged her shoulders and leaned on the counter, her shoulder just barely touching Sam's. "Because who are we to throw stones." Keily sighed and shifted her weight on the stool, leaning heavier on Sam's shoulder. "Bein' hunters, we've done things we're not proud of. Made sacrifices for what we thought was the greater good."

Keily lifted her beer glass and took a sip, giving herself a moment to collect her thoughts. Then she turned her head to look up into Sam's hazel eyes, holding his gaze. "It's not fair to pass judgment on either of you when Kearney and I are no better."

Sam, his mouth suddenly dry, forced himself to swallow and look away from Keily's piercing aquamarine eyes. "Did either of you start the Apocalypse," he muttered angrily under his breath.

"No, but we certainly helped pave the way," Keily replied, surprising Sam. He hadn't intended for her to hear his comment, assuming that the loud music and even louder buzz of conversations would drown him out. "Guilt is something every hunter, every decent human bein', carries with 'em, Sam. You just have to choose what you want to do with it. Do you want to wallow or do you want to put right what you can and live with what you can't?"

Sam stared at Keily, speechless. _She's right_, he thought. _Dean and I have screwed up a lot of things, but we're also the only ones who can fix them._

For a few moments, Sam just sat there, thinking back over all the choices, both good and bad, he'd made over the last five years. There were a lot of things he couldn't change - not telling Jess the truth about who he was, what his family was. His last moments with his father, which he'd spent stubbornly arguing with John. Letting Ruby manipulate him and drive a wedge between the only person in Sam's life who'd always been there for him. Letting his addiction to demon blood cloud his judgment and allow him to miss the glaring signs that what he was doing, what he was becoming, was wrong despite his best intentions.

No, there were a lot of things that Sam couldn't fix, but there was one thing he knew he could. Freeing Lucifer had been his fault, Sam's ultimate moment of weakness and stupidity, but it wasn't permanent. He could put Lucifer back. He was _going_ to put Lucifer back, if it was his last living act.

The music changed, the soft end notes of the Foo Fighter's "Times Like These" fading off as the volume in the bar picked up. Sam didn't recognize the next song that began at first, but as he raised his eyes to the reflection of the jukebox in the mirror, he felt his jaw slowly drop open.

Reggie stood at the jukebox, her hips moving to the music, seemingly oblivious to the rest of the bar. Sam suddenly remembered the song. The Guess Who's "American Woman." It was a sultry song, despite the lyrics, and Sam saw that, as Reggie moved into the center of the impromptu dance floor, eyes followed her. Those that weren't male, shot daggers at the young woman as she danced.

Sam watched his brother from the corner of his eye. Dean's jaw hung slightly agape as he watched Reggie. Sam stifled a chuckle, knowing what had to be going through not just Dean's mind but the minds of every man in the bar as well. Sam had to admit, seeing Reggie dance the way she was, looking the way she did, had him thinking some inappropriate thoughts himself.

A man, clad in black denim jeans and a dark blue polo shirt, approached Reggie and began to dance with her. When the man reached out to pull Reggie closer, she stepped away and began to move across the floor again, keeping in perfect time to the music. Sam turned in his seat to better watch the scene before him and saw two of the college guys Reggie had waited on earlier get shot down too.

As a third guy approached, Sam saw Dean hop off his stool and stroll across the floor toward Reggie. Sam knew Reggie had sensed Dean step up behind her as she continued to dance alone.

Dean slid his hand around Reggie's waist, pulling her against him, as they began to dance together. It felt almost indecent to watch, Dean and Reggie moving together in such an intimate way, but it didn't seem to bother Reggie and Dean. They danced together as if they were the only ones in the bar and, perhaps to them, they were.

It was something Sam had witnessed his brother do before. Dean always appeared to make the woman in his arms his sole focus, his eyes zeroed in on her face even as he was checking out the rest of the room in his peripheral, his moves smooth and effortless.

Dean and Reggie danced together for the rest of the song. When it ended there was a hush of silence in the bar, all of the patrons bewitched by what they'd just watched. Reggie and Dean stared at each other, Dean's arms wrapped around her slender waist, Reggie's palms flat against his chest.

Finally, someone cleared their throat and broke the spell, the bar launching back into the incoherent buzz of multiple conversations all going at the same time once more.

"Wow," Sam heard Keily mumbled. He turned and saw her fanning herself. "I feel like I just witnessed somethin'…immoral," she added with a grin as she met Sam's eyes.

"That about sums up my brother's entire life," Sam said with a laugh.

Sam watched Dean whisper something into Reggie's ear before stepping away. Reggie shrugged one shoulder, turned on her heel, and strode back to the bar. Instead of resuming her post as bartender, she disappeared through the kitchen door. Dean strolled over to Sam with a sly grin pulling at his lips.

"What?" Dean asked, feigning ignorance as he slid onto the barstool beside Sam. Sam just shook his head, turned back to the mirrors, and sipped his beer.

"Nothing."

A second later, the kitchen door opened again and Reggie stepped through it, Dag hot on her heels. The look on Reggie's face made any of the heat Sam had felt watching her dance with Dean fade away only to be replaced with cold worry. Dag's words that followed their arrival turned that worry to icy dread.

"Jacob Hardelle's T.A. was just found murdered in his home."

**V**

Sam leaned against the counter in the kitchen, the cold metal seeping through his shirt into his lower back. It was an uncomfortable sensation and he began to fidget, warranting a sly, sideways grin from his brother. Dean sat beside him, his legs swinging beneath him, his eyes focused on the man across the room. Henry Dagwood stood talking into his cell phone, his words muffled and incoherent.

"So the details basically mirror the Hardelle's?" Dean asked Reggie as she leaned against the counter on his other side.

"Well, sort of. William Thomas lived alone, but according to what was heard over the police scanner, there were obvious signs of torture." Reggie sighed and shoved away from the counter. She began to pace in front of Sam and Dean, glancing periodically over at Dag. "Someone's going to have to go down there and check it out."

"Sam and I can do it," Dean offered. "We've got the ID's for it and the local cops already know us. It wouldn't seem unusual for us to show up at a connected murder."

"Sounds like a good plan to me," Dag said as he joined the group, slipping his cell phone into the front pocket of his black pants. "I'll have Kearney get as much information as he can before you leave so you're not going in blind."

"Sam can hack into the police database and get that."

"I'm sure Sam's capable, but Kearney is one of the best hackers I've met," Dag said. "He can get in and out without anyone being the wiser."

Dean clapped his hands together and hopped off the counter. "Whatever works for you," he said with a shrug. "Sam and I will head out first thing in the morning and call once we're done."

"I called a few of the troops," Dag said, looking directly at Reggie. "Figured it might be good to have some extra hands on deck, just in case."

Reggie nodded her head. "When Quinn gets here, I'll fill him in…"

"I think Reggie should go with Dean," Sam said, interrupting Reggie. Dean turned and stared at Sam, his eyebrows raised in mild shock.

"Why?"

"My head for one," Sam stated. When Dean's eyebrows only inched up further, Sam elaborated. "Dude, I have a lump the size of New Jersey on the back of my skull and a gash that no amount of styling is going cover. I show up looking like someone worked me over with a crowbar, the cops are going to ask questions."

Dean eyed Sam for a moment, his eyes trying to discern what was really going on in Sam's head. Sam stared back, keeping his expression impassive. After a moment, Dean shrugged his shoulders and turned his head away. "Whatever floats your boat, Sammy."

"If you don't mind, Reggie," Dag said.

Reggie shook her head no, tossing Sam a furtive glance that he acknowledged with a subtle tilt of his head. "No, that's fine with me."

Dag nodded his head and clapped a hand on Sam's shoulder. "I'll fill Quinn in when he gets here and put Sam to good use tomorrow."

"Okay, so it's settled? Dean and I will head to Dover in the morning then," Reggie confirmed, her eyes jumping to Dean. Dean shrugged his shoulders and leaned against the huge metal island in the center of the room.

The kitchen door opened as Kearney and Keily walked through.

"Bar's all locked up, Dag," Keily said as she stepped up beside Sam. "Some folks weren't too happy 'bout being kicked out early, but I'm sure they'll get over it by tomorrow."

"Good," Dag said with a nod of his head. He turned to Kearney and placed a hand on the man's shoulder. "Kear, I want you to get on the computer. Gather as much information as the Dover PD's got. Reggie and Dean are going to head out at first light so be as thorough as you can."

"Aye." Kearney turned and headed out of the kitchen.

"I'll see what I can do to help 'im," Keily said into the silence that followed her brother's departure. She cast one last glance at the group, before hurrying through the still swinging white door.

"I'll try and stop by in the morning to see you two off," Dag said as he made his way to the door.

"Wait. Where are you going?" Dean asked, his voice coming out in a suspicious growl.

"I've got things to do as well. Set tasks, alternate shifts to make sure everyone is alert. You know, boring menial work."

"We can help you with some of that, if you want," Dean offered. "Sam here loves boring menial work."

"Dean…" Sam groaned.

Dag chuckled. "Nah. I've got it handled. But come see me tomorrow if you need something to do, Sam, okay?'

Sam nodded his head. "Yeah, sure."

Dag walked through the door, leaving Dean, Reggie, and Sam alone for the first time in over an hour. Reggie slumped against one of the refrigerators and reached up to scrub her face with her hands. It was something that Dean did when he was frustrated or exhausted and it was apparent that Reggie was both.

"Okay, so we should probably head up to bed," Reggie said with a sigh, pushing herself away from the fridge. "It's going to be a long day and we have quite an act to put on tomorrow."

"Yeah, you're probably right," Dean said, throwing out an arm to stop Sam as he began to follow after Reggie.

Reggie turned at the door, looking at Sam and Dean. One eyebrow quirked up when she saw Dean's hand on Sam's chest. "You guys coming?"

"In a minute. I've gotta talk to Sam for a second."

Reggie's mouth opened, a question on the tip of her tongue, when Sam imperceptibly shook his head, urging her to go ahead without argument. Reggie's mouth closed into a frown. Then she turned and strode from the kitchen. The second the door swung closed behind her, Dean spun on Sam.

"What the hell is going on in that scrambled head of yours?"

"What are you talking about?" Sam asked, avoiding Dean's angry glare. He took a few steps away from Dean and picked up a spatula, flexing the silicon utensil with his fingers.

"You can't honestly believe that I would buy that 'bump on the head' crap, do you?"

"It's not crap, man. A beam _fell _on my head." Sam snapped, spinning on Dean. He saw his brother's face, saw the suspicion and betrayal that still echoed within Dean, and he faltered. Sam sighed. "Look. Reggie asked me to check out the people here. She thinks there might be a rat."

Dean's mouth opened and closed a few times, his mind trying to wrap around what Sam had just said. "What?"

"Someone had to have tipped off the demons, told them that hunters were going to show up at the Hardelle house when they did. Reggie thinks it had to be someone here, that there's a traitor among them."

"If Reggie doesn't trust these people, why the hell is she still here?"

"Because, Dean. Think about it. Not everyone in this place is a threat," Sam said with exasperation.

He decided to turn it around in a way he knew Dean would never be able to contest.

"If there is a possibility that somebody here has switched teams, that it could cost everyone around us their lives, would _you_ leave?"

It was Dean's turn to sigh. He reached up and ran a hand through his close-cropped hair, scrubbing his head before letting his hand drop back down. "Yeah, okay. Fair enough." Dean leaned on the fridge, his back against the cold metal. "Why the hell didn't she tell me about this? Why didn't _you, _for that matter?"

"Because Reggie knew that if she did, you'd try to pack up and leave, dragging her with us," Sam said. He chuckled when his words stopped Dean's shaking head. "Face it, man. Reggie knows you. She knows _us_. She knows that neither of us will walk away from this town until we know what the hell is going on here."

"She's sneaky," Dean muttered, a small smile tugging up one corner of his mouth. "Okay. We'll stick around as long as it takes to figure out who the wolf in sheep's clothing is."

Dean shoved away from the fridge and started for the door.

"You coming?" he asked, stopping to look over his shoulder when Sam didn't follow.

"Yeah. Sure," Sam said, shaking his head. A smile began to creep across Sam's face, making Dean frown again.

"What the hell are you grinning about?" Dean snapped, following after Sam as he led the way through the bar and into the hallway heading to their rooms.

"Nothing," Sam replied with a chuckle. "It's just… Who's driving tomorrow?"

* * *

***As always, I will post my Musical Playlist at the completion of this story.***


	10. Chapter 10

_For both **Disclaimer** and **Spoiler Alert**, please see Chapter 1._

Hope you enjoy it! More to come...

Please review - whether you loved it, hated it, or whatever emotions it evoked... Thanks!

* * *

Dean and Reggie stood in the parking lot of the garage behind Coogan's Bar, the Impala and the Plymouth in front of them looking like the last two children in gym class waiting to be picked for dodge ball. Both hunters had their keys out, but neither had made an actual move to their own vehicles.

"This is stupid. We're taking my car," Reggie snapped impatiently, heading toward the dark blue car.

"No, we're taking mine," Dean growled back, heading for the Impala's driver's side.

"I know the route, I know the area. I should be the one to drive," Reggie argued. Dean turned to face Reggie, matching her glare with one of his own.

"So? You can tell me where to go." He pulled open his door.

"I'm not a freakin' GPS, Dean," Reggie barked out, opening her car door. "Either you man up and get in the damned Plymouth or I'm leaving your ass to circle the city trying to find your way to the police station." With that, Reggie dropped behind the wheel of her car and shut the door.

Dean stared at her, frustration and irritation making his breathing heavy. With a growl, he slammed the Impala's door and stomped over to the passenger side of the Plymouth. Reggie turn the ignition as Dean opened the door and gunned the engine as he flopped onto the seat beside her.

"Good choice," Reggie said with a triumphant grin. Dean glared out the side window, refusing to let Reggie see his own reluctant grin.

Reggie pulled the Plymouth onto the main road, easing into the light, early-morning traffic. Dean stifled a yawn and reached over to switch on the radio, letting the music play lightly in the background as Reggie headed back to the highway as he picked up the folder Reggie had resting on the dark tan seat between them, opened it and began to scan through the printed computer papers.

"Kearney did a thorough search on this Thomas guy. We've got financial records, medical history, even a copy of his friggin' high school diploma."

"Dag told him to dig deep. What was truly interesting was the coroner's preliminary."

Dean flipped past a few pages, cringing at the black and white photos he discovered in the middle of the folder.

"They cut out his eyes?"

"Gross, I know, but not exactly what I was referring to." Reggie glanced over and tapped the top of a report. Dean pulled the paper to the front and scanned the information. "The eyes were removed anti-mortem."

"So ol' Billy was still kickin' when he lost his peepers." Dean shook his head and closed the folder. "Why the hell would a bunch of demons cut out the eyes of some poor schlub? I mean, I get that they were torturing him, but why the eyes? There are much better ways to get information out of someone without resorting to that much overkill."

_I certainly know all about that,_ Dean thought bitterly. He felt Reggie's eyes on his face, as if reading his thoughts. Dean tried to keep his face blank, hoping – praying – that Reggie wouldn't ask him any questions.

Dean let out a sigh of relief when all Reggie did was shrug her shoulders. "That's what we're going to have to try and figure out."

They drove in silence for a while, the radio playing softly into the silence around them as Reggie skirted through the increasing traffic. Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Bad Moon Rising" began, pulling Dean from his mindless observation of the outskirts of Dover. He reached over to turn off the radio, but Reggie beat him to it, somehow sensing Dean's desire to be rid of the song. She flashed him a small smile and Dean returned, feeling the grimace relax off his face. Again she refrained from asking any questions.

Dean's mind flashed to the morning after he and Sam had met Reggie, sitting at her kitchen table, drinking coffee and cleaning guns. It hadn't been that long since his release from Hell at the hand of Castiel so when Reggie had sought permission to ask Dean a question, he begun to prepare for his quick exit. He had been pleasantly surprised when Reggie hadn't asked Dean about Hell at all. Later, when Dean had asked her why she wasn't asking him the million dollar questions everyone else seemed to want know, Reggie had simply said that she could see that Dean didn't want to talk about it.

That simple statement had endeared Dean to the female hunter more than even she could imagine. Dean shook his head, trying to push the memory away and noticed a sign pointing in the direction to the police station. Instead of following it though, Reggie turned and headed in the opposite direction.

"Uh…you were supposed to make a left," Dean said, pointing back at the road they should have turned on to.

"I know. But if you haven't noticed, we don't exactly look like federal agents," Reggie replied, shooting a brief glance at Dean's attire. Dean looked down at his brown leather jacket, the blue paisley over a dark blue t-shirt, his torn blue jeans, and black boots.

"Yeah, okay. How do you plan to rectify that?"

Reggie pulled into the parking lot of a seedy looking motel, the neon vacancy sign flickering in a staccato Dean could hear even through the closed windows. Reggie killed the engine and sat back against the seat, the supple leather creaking softly beneath her. She kept her gaze on the crumbling building that was the motel's office in front of them.

"Sam put your suit in the trunk earlier this morning."

Dean gaped at her, the implication of Reggie's words bouncing around in his head. Sam had figured Reggie would win the battle of wills, leaving Dean riding shotgun. He was going to have to remember to thank his little brother. Preferably with a good smack to the back of that aching head of his.

"I'm going to go in and get a room for us to change. Be back in five." Reggie practically bolted from the car, but not before Dean caught the grin on her face.

"I'm going to kill you, Sammy," Dean grumbled as he watched Reggie jog up the walk and into the motel office.

Reggie returned a few minutes later, a key in the shape of a pyramid dangling from her hand. Dean climbed from the car and circled around to the trunk to grab his suit. He found himself staring down at two black bags in the trunk sitting on top of his suit. When Reggie lifted them out so Dean could get his clothes, he noticed there was a garment bag underneath as well.

"What is all that?" Dean asked as Reggie began carrying all three pieces of luggage toward their rented room.

"Stuff," Reggie replied vaguely. She unlocked the door and swung it open, motioning for Dean to go ahead of her.

They stepped into what was apparently a vain attempt in Egyptian motif.

A partition split the two queen beds from the miniscule dining area, delineating the two rooms with a screen of golden pyramids. The single bay window was draped in gold and sand colored curtains covered in tiny hieroglyphic recreations of Egyptians in various poses.

The sand colored bedspreads had giant bronze sphinxes in the center and the lamps were inaccurate statue replicas of Egyptian gods. Reggie paused in the doorway, appalled by the interior, while Dean ignored it. He'd seen his fair share of hideous motels over the years, enough to make him barely notice the tacky decoration.

"Good god," Reggie muttered with a shudder, finally closing the door and cutting off the sounds of the waking city.

Dean shrugged out of his jacket and tossed it on the bed nearest the door. "You'll get used to it."

"Sure. Either that or I'll have a seizure."

Dean chuckled as he slid off the paisley shirt and tossed that on top of his jacket. "You better get ready. We should probably get to the station by nine."

Reggie headed into the bathroom, shutting the door behind her. Dean stared at the door for a moment, confused and mildly shocked.

"Why the sudden modesty?" he called to the closed door.

"It's not modesty, it's self preservation," Reggie called back, her voice coming out in a huff as she struggled with something.

Dean quickly got dressed, dropping onto the end of the bed to put his dress shoes on. "Self preservation?"

"I'm in the process of doing some extremely girlie things and I don't feel like hearing any juvenile remarks or inane questions from you." The faucet turned on, preventing Dean from continuing the conversation.

Several minutes later, which to Dean felt like an eternity as he struggled with his tie, the bathroom door opened.

"Thank god. I was beginning to think you'd climbed out the window or something," Dean grumbled, his chin hitting his chest as he stared down at the impossible garment he held in his hands. He rolled his neck to work out the kink that had formed, looked up, and felt his jaw drop open.

Reggie stood in the doorway dressed in a slim, short black skirt, a snug white top that cut low enough for Dean to see an ample amount of cleavage underneath a matching black suit jacket. Her hair was pulled back and secured in an intricate twist, a few loose strands hanging out to frame her face in wispy curls.

Even from where he stood, Dean could see that Reggie had applied makeup as well. It was subtle, earth tones that accentuated her beauty in a natural way. However, the red on her lips kept drawing Dean's eyes as Reggie braced herself against the doorjamb to slip on black heels. The sight drew the breath from Dean's lungs for a moment.

Reggie looked up at Dean and frowned. "What?"

Dean swallowed hard and shook his head, unable to find his voice as he continued to stare at Reggie.

"Here. Let me fix that," Reggie said, motioning to Dean's tie. He glanced down numbly, staring at the black slip of fabric dangling from his neck. Reggie crossed the room and began adjusting Dean's tie, her hands moving deftly as she untangled and then began to tie it properly.

"Thanks," Dean finally managed to say. He looked up at Reggie as she stood in front of him, nibbling nervously on the corner of her lip as she worked. Dean cleared his throat and focused on a spot over Reggie's shoulder. "You clean up nice."

Reggie finished securing Dean's tie and ran her hands across his shoulders, smoothing out the suit jacket. She adjusted his collar, her fingers trailing along the skin of his neck and raising goosebumps on Dean's skin.

"You don't look so bad yourself," she said with a smile.

Reggie took a step back, reaching down to button the two black buttons on her suit jacket, completing the look of an FBI agent perfectly. Dean found himself trailing his eyes over Reggie's figure, indecent thoughts firing through his brain.

Reggie chuckled and shook her head. "Eyes up top, Dean."

Dean smirked, shrugged his shoulders, and tucked his pearl handled Colt .45 behind his back into the waistband of his pants. He made a sweeping motion toward the motel door. "Ready when you are, agent."

Reggie walked past Dean, humming. It took a moment for him to recognize the tune. When he did, a smile spread across Dean's face.

"Are you humming "Sharp Dressed Man"?"

Reggie glanced over her shoulder at Dean, a devilish smile on her face, and shrugged one shoulder before striding from the motel room out into the bright day.

**V**

"Well, that was fun," Dean grumbled as he yanked his tie loose and tugging it completely off as he and Reggie made their way back to the parking garage where they'd parked the Plymouth.

He stuffed the tie into a pocket of his suit jacket, jamming his fingers down on top of something hard and sharp. Dean yanked out his hand, the tip of his index finger bleeding as their motel room key swung from his hand.

"Un-freakin'-believable!" he shouted before sticking his fingertip into his mouth.

"Would you relax. It couldn't have been that bad," Reggie cajoled.

"No? Maybe you neglected to notice the giant stack of forms I had to fill out while you went off with the chief to discuss case details. Or maybe you forgot who had to go down to the morgue and mull over the finer points of optical extraction with Gomez Adams," Dean grumbled, jabbing at the button for the garage's geriatric elevator.

The elevator arrived with a clang that made Dean's teeth hurt. Reggie stepped inside, but Dean hesitated, wishing he'd just taken the stairs. Finally he got in, hoping to avoid any awkward comments about his less than enthusiastic attitude. Reggie pushed the button for the correct floor, reminding Dean that it would be an extremely short ride.

"Do you think I enjoyed being ogled like a piece of meat by some perverted, overweight, underpaid jerk? What you had to do may have been unpleasant, but at least you were treated like a friggin' federal agent. That "police chief" talked to me like I was his ten year old daughter, which gives me great concern for the poor girl considering the way he insisted on addressing my chest!"

Reggie stormed out of the elevator, her heels clacking against the concrete as she headed for the Plymouth. When she reached the car, she yanked open the driver's side door and angrily unbuttoned her suit jacket. With a growl, she yanked off the shoes and threw them into the back seat, before following with her suit jacket. Dean chuckled, finding Reggie's aggravation cute.

Reggie glared at him. "What are you laughing at?"

Dean shook his head and tossed his suit jacket onto the backseat as he slid into the passenger seat. "Nothing."

Reggie slammed her door and started the car, still glaring at Dean. "I know that smirk, Dean," she growled out, slamming on the gas pedal and peeling out of the parking spot in of screech of burning rubber and smoke. "You think my anger is adorable."

"Maybe a little," Dean replied with a shrug. "I'm sorry, but you're like a kitten with a lion complex, Reggie. All fired up because some clearly unsatisfied asshole sized you up."

"So? What? Because I'm self-assured and attractive, that's okay?"

Reggie turned in the seat, her green eyes alight with anger. Dean held up his hands in automatic defense.

"No, that's not what I'm saying and you know it," Dean hurriedly explained, as the light they'd been stopped at turned green. Reggie slammed on the gas again, speeding them through the intersection and down another busy street. "What I mean is, my god Reggie. Look at you. You're a fantasy brought to life for this guy."

Dean waited in silence, afraid of swallowing anymore of his foot than he already had.

"A fantasy, huh?" Reggie grumbled a moment later, a smile pulling up the corner of her mouth. She glanced over at Dean, meeting his gaze. "Well, at least I managed to get some information the police haven't put in any reports yet."

"Really?" Dean asked, relieved to see that he'd rescued himself from Reggie's ire.

"Seems that William Thomas was an occult expert," Reggie said, turning down a small side street and skirting around a dumpster much faster than Dean would have done had he been driving the Impala. "The body was found on top of an intricate pentagram…"

"A devil's trap…"

Reggie nodded her head. "And so now the police think Mr. Thomas was murdered because he'd gone too deep. That he was murdered during some strange ritual." Reggie pulled up in front of a tall red brick building, cutting the engine and turning in her seat. "All of that isn't what's missing from the reports. What's missing is that William Thomas had the largest collection of occult paraphernalia in the country. For a civilian anyway."

"By paraphernalia you mean books, don't you?"

Reggie nodded her head. "That was the majority of what he collected, yes."

"So you think Billy had the Books of Solomon"

"Might've. His place was apparently destroyed. As if someone was looking for something after they killed Thomas."

"Shit. So the demons could have the books?" Dean slammed his hand against the dashboard, feeling his heart freeze in his chest.

"No, they don't. At least, I think it's unlikely," Reggie said. Dean turned to look at her, confused by the assuredness in her voice. "You met with the coroner."

"Yeah? So?"

"So? Dean, how long did he tell you William Thomas had been dead?"

Dean thought back over the conversation he'd had with Albert Finnegan, the Dover coroner and all the documents he'd read since seven-thirty that morning. It all seemed a blur, but he tried to focus on the information he'd gotten from the coroner specifically.

"Around a week." Dean frowned at Reggie, trying to figure out where she was going.

"Right. Two whole days before the Hardelle's were murdered," Reggie said with a confident grin. "That means…"

"That the demons moved on to Jacob Hardelle because they didn't find what they were looking for at William Thomas's place," Dean exclaimed. His face lit up with relief at the sudden realization that the demons were no closer to finding the books then they were a day ago.

Dean looked up at the structure they were parked in front of, recognizing that it was a ratty looking apartment building.

"Where are we?"

"William Thomas's residence."

Reggie reached into the backseat to get her heels from where they'd fallen during her erratic driving. Dean took the opportunity to check out the way her butt looked in the skirt.

"If you take a picture, it'll last longer," Reggie said as she shifted back into place on the seat, a sly smile on her face. Dean's matching crooked grin was automatic.

"I might just have to."

Reggie rolled her eyes and climbed from the car, shutting the Plymouth's door quietly behind her. She started up the crumbling stairs, Dean on her heels, both of them casting glances to make sure they weren't being noticed. The neighborhood appeared to be deserted; not even the sound of dogs or traffic.

Dean stood just outside the entryway, keeping watch while Reggie made quick work of the lock. They slipped inside a few minutes later, turning on small penlights as they headed for the stairwell to take the rickety flight of stairs to the fourth floor where William Thomas's apartment was. Police tape crisscrossed the door, marking the apartment far better than the faded white numbers painted on the doors.

"Nice of them to wrap it up in a bow for us," Dean said, yanking off the police tape.

"Let's hope they cleaned up the place a little too."

After letting Dean pick the padlock the police had installed on Thomas's door to replace the broken lock, Reggie led the way into the apartment. The place was in complete disarray. Bookshelves hung partially ripped from the walls. Books, many of them with the pages ripped out, scattered the floor, mixed with broken glass and chunks of wood.

Any furniture had been torn apart, pieces of stuffing and fabric strewn around the incredibly tiny living space. Reggie and Dean stood in the center of the living room, surveying the chaos around them.

"It looks like a bomb went off in here," Reggie said, her voice hushed in dismay.

Dean squatted down, shifting pieces of debris out of the way to reveal the devil's trap on the gray carpet. "It looks like it was painted on," Dean said, scratching at the carpet with a fingertip. He picked up the leg of a wooden dining chair, the only apparent remnant of the furniture piece left, and stood up, showing it to Reggie.

"Almost like in the Hardelle house," Reggie said, taking the chair leg from Dean. "They positioned the chair and then finished the trap."

"Let's get the hell out of here," Dean grunted, turning and heading for the door before Reggie could reply. He could feel the anger bubbling inside of him and knew standing inside of William Thomas's apartment, seeing the damage around him, was only making it worse.

Dean stepped outside, taking a deep breath and exhaling slowly, trying to calm the sound of rushing of blood in his ears. He closed his eyes against the bright sunlight, wishing the world around him would dim just a little bit and give him some peace for a moment. He felt Reggie step up beside him, but she remained quiet, letting him get control of himself.

Finally, Dean opened his eyes and looked over at Reggie. She stared out across the street, watching the few trees remaining in the dying park across the street bend and shake in the growing wind. Dean knew she could feel him watching her, but she continued to stare straight ahead for a few minutes longer.

Finally, Reggie turned toward Dean, her green eyes softening as she looked up at him. She stared at him for a few minutes, making Dean begin to feel a little uncomfortable.

"C'mon," Reggie said, reaching out and grabbing Dean's hand. She pulled him off the sidewalk and over to the Plymouth, letting go so that she could circle the car and get in behind the wheel.

Dean climbed into the car, his curiosity peaked by Reggie's suddenly odd behavior. There was a small smile on her face as she drove them through the city, giving her a slightly devious look. Reggie pulled up to the curb in front of a small, nondescript building and put the Plymouth in park.

"Be right back," she said before quickly getting out of the car, leaving Dean sitting in the idling Plymouth. Dean watched her until she disappeared inside. He sat in silence for a few seconds then flipped on the radio. "Slow Ride" had just begun so Dean blasted it, letting Foghat's signature song thrum through him as he waited for Reggie to return.

Dean had gotten so caught up in the song, drumming his fingers on the tops of his thighs and rocking to the beat that he failed to notice Reggie's return until she opened the driver's side door with a loud creak. Dean jumped, swearing under his breath as Reggie slid back behind the wheel, a large paper bag in her hands.

"Sorry," Reggie said with a chuckle. "I thought you saw me jogging back over."

Dean shook his head, eying the paper bag now sitting on the seat between them. Reggie saw him and draped an arm over the bag, pulling it toward her.

"What's in the bag?"

Reggie shook her head, driving them through the city as the afternoon traffic began to pick up. Dean assumed they were returning to the motel to change back into normal clothes before heading to the bar, but instead Reggie kept driving, taking the main highway out of the city.

"All will be revealed," Reggie said as Dean opened his mouth to ask where they were going. She reached over and turned up the radio, letting Bad Company sing about being a shooting star as she drove.

As the sun began to set, streaking the horizon with orange and red, Reggie turned down a gravel road, the car bumping and rocking down the road. Trees on either side blocked any view of the area Dean might have gotten, giving him no idea where he was or what was going through Reggie's mind.

The car slowed to a crawl as the road got worse, the potholes getting larger and larger until, finally, they drove into a clearing and Reggie pulled to a stop. She turned off the engine and gave Dean a moment to look around.

There was an old wooden bench a few feet from the front of the Plymouth, the only sign of civilization in the woody hollow. Dean scanned the area, feeling an unease build within him. _Was this a trap? Was Reggie the snitch and Dean had just been too blind to see it because of how he may or may not feel for her? _Dean's thoughts swirled wildly as he began to panic.

The rustling of paper drew his attention back to the interior of the car. Reggie reached into the bag and Dean steeled himself, preparing for an attack as she began to withdraw her hand.

* * *

***As always, I will post my Musical Playlist at the completion of this story.***


End file.
